Anion Exchange Membrane Water stack based on Earth Abundant 2D Materials for Green Hydrogen Production

The baseline technology for green H2 production is the water-electrolysis (WE). However, roughly 96% of the H2 produced today is from fossil fuels, with the remaining 4% produced through water electrolysis , due to the still-high costs, and lower performance of current electrolysers compared with other production processes not affected by the use of toxic or critical raw materials (CRM). Therefore, there is a need of boosting the development of highly active and efficient catalysts to turn green hydrogen into a viable solution to decarbonise different sectors and to meet the ambitious goals settled in the Hydrogen Strategy.This project proposes an advanced Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyser (AEMWE) stack as a critical milestone to translate the highly promising results coming from the ground-breaking research conducted during the ERC-StG awarded to Dr G. Abellán, into a marketable innovation. The AEMWE stack novelty relies on non-toxic CRM-free breakthrough novel electrodes (anodes) made of two-dimensional (2D) nickel-iron layered double hydroxide materials (2D NiFe-LDHs) that have shown an outstanding catalytic behaviour. Using this electrocatalytic material will allow overcoming the main challenges of WE to produce green H2.The activities to be undertaken under the 2D4H2 project, are aimed to prepare the translation of the 2D NiFe-LDHs electrocatalytic materials into an AEMWE stack as a precursor of a future fully operational 0.5kW electrolyser. For this purpose, the necessary optimisation and characterisation of the electrocatalyst to enable the testing and validation in a pilot plant of the single unit cell, and the AEMWE stack prototype, will be carried out together with the elaboration of an integrated strategy for effectively managing the knowledge generated during the project, including clarifying the IPR position, and an exploitation strategy involving potential stakeholders in order to evolve the idea further towards exploitation.