The Implementation of a Highly Efficient Hydrogen Generation System Producing High Purity Hydrogen in a Solid Oxide Electrolyser.

Abstract

Solid Oxide Electrolyzer Cells (SOECs) stand out as one of the most efficient energy conversion technologies (i.e. enabling production of hydrogen fuel from surplus electrical energy), which is particularly well-suited for application in the distributed systems. While definitely very promising, until now SOEC technology is still not widespread, with the key technical limiting issues being i.a. high costs and deterioration of the operation parameters during prolonged operation. However, recently another major problem has become very urgent. Although most of the developed oxygen electrode materials are Co-based, there are strong reasons to mitigate the dependence on cobalt: deposits of Co ore are limited, and known commercial-level sources are localized in regions with volatile economic and unstable political situation; cobalt is classified as carcinogenic, and this fact leads to severe problems with public health especially at the mining sites; there are many examples of violations of the ecological standards in cobalt processing. In this work we propose modification of the bulk properties of the typical perovskite-type oxygen electrode material, La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3-δ, via chemical doping with Ni and Cu in order to limit usage of Co, while at the same time enhance properties of the materials to obtain excellent electrocatalytic activity.