IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v14y2023i1d10.1038_s41467-023-40375-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ionomer-free and recyclable porous-transport electrode for high-performing proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysis

Author

Listed:
  • Jason K. Lee

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Grace Anderson

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    University of California Berkeley)

  • Andrew W. Tricker

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Finn Babbe

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Arya Madan

    (University of California Berkeley)

  • David A. Cullen

    (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

  • José’ D. Arregui-Mena

    (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

  • Nemanja Danilovic

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Rangachary Mukundan

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Adam Z. Weber

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

  • Xiong Peng

    (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Abstract

Clean hydrogen production requires large-scale deployment of water-electrolysis technologies, particularly proton-exchange-membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs). However, as iridium-based electrocatalysts remain the only practical option for PEMWEs, their low abundance will become a bottleneck for a sustainable hydrogen economy. Herein, we propose high-performing and durable ionomer-free porous transport electrodes (PTEs) with facile recycling features enabling Ir thrifting and reclamation. The ionomer-free porous transport electrodes offer a practical pathway to investigate the role of ionomer in the catalyst layer and, from microelectrode measurements, point to an ionomer poisoning effect for the oxygen evolution reaction. The ionomer-free porous transport electrodes demonstrate a voltage reduction of > 600 mV compared to conventional ionomer-coated porous transport electrodes at 1.8 A cm−2 and

Suggested Citation

  • Jason K. Lee & Grace Anderson & Andrew W. Tricker & Finn Babbe & Arya Madan & David A. Cullen & José’ D. Arregui-Mena & Nemanja Danilovic & Rangachary Mukundan & Adam Z. Weber & Xiong Peng, 2023. "Ionomer-free and recyclable porous-transport electrode for high-performing proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysis," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-40375-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40375-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40375-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-023-40375-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhang, Hanfei & Wang, Ligang & Van herle, Jan & Maréchal, François & Desideri, Umberto, 2020. "Techno-economic comparison of green ammonia production processes," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    2. David A. Cullen & K. C. Neyerlin & Rajesh K. Ahluwalia & Rangachary Mukundan & Karren L. More & Rodney L. Borup & Adam Z. Weber & Deborah J. Myers & Ahmet Kusoglu, 2021. "New roads and challenges for fuel cells in heavy-duty transportation," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 6(5), pages 462-474, May.
    3. Buttler, Alexander & Spliethoff, Hartmut, 2018. "Current status of water electrolysis for energy storage, grid balancing and sector coupling via power-to-gas and power-to-liquids: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 2440-2454.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Qing & He, Yuting & Zhang, Luteng & Pan, Liangming & Sun, Wan & Ma, Zaiyong & Zhu, Longxiang & Lian, Qiang & Tang, Simiao, 2024. "Optimizing oxygen transport in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis through tailored porosity configurations of porous transport layers," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 370(C).
    2. Kang, Zhenye & Yang, Gaoqiang & Mo, Jingke, 2024. "Development of an ultra-thin electrode for the oxygen evolution reaction in proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    3. Liu, Chang & Wrubel, Jacob A. & Padgett, Elliot & Bender, Guido, 2024. "Impacts of PTL coating gaps on cell performance for PEM water electrolyzer," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 356(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ren, Lei & Zhou, Sheng & Peng, Tianduo & Ou, Xunmin, 2022. "Greenhouse gas life cycle analysis of China's fuel cell medium- and heavy-duty trucks under segmented usage scenarios and vehicle types," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    2. Lim, Dongjun & Lee, Boreum & Lee, Hyunjun & Byun, Manhee & Lim, Hankwon, 2022. "Projected cost analysis of hybrid methanol production from tri-reforming of methane integrated with various water electrolysis systems: Technical and economic assessment," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    3. Lee, Jason K. & Schuler, Tobias & Bender, Guido & Sabharwal, Mayank & Peng, Xiong & Weber, Adam Z. & Danilovic, Nemanja, 2023. "Interfacial engineering via laser ablation for high-performing PEM water electrolysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 336(C).
    4. Campion, Nicolas & Nami, Hossein & Swisher, Philip R. & Vang Hendriksen, Peter & Münster, Marie, 2023. "Techno-economic assessment of green ammonia production with different wind and solar potentials," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    5. Kim, Sunwoo & Choi, Yechan & Park, Joungho & Adams, Derrick & Heo, Seongmin & Lee, Jay H., 2024. "Multi-period, multi-timescale stochastic optimization model for simultaneous capacity investment and energy management decisions for hybrid Micro-Grids with green hydrogen production under uncertainty," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 190(PA).
    6. Oliver Wagner & Thomas Adisorn & Lena Tholen & Dagmar Kiyar, 2020. "Surviving the Energy Transition: Development of a Proposal for Evaluating Sustainable Business Models for Incumbents in Germany’s Electricity Market," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-17, February.
    7. Mucci, Simone & Stumm, Marc-Daniel & Rix, Michael J. & Mitsos, Alexander, 2025. "Model-based evaluation of ammonia energy storage concepts at high technological readiness level," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PB).
    8. d'Amore-Domenech, Rafael & Leo, Teresa J. & Pollet, Bruno G., 2021. "Bulk power transmission at sea: Life cycle cost comparison of electricity and hydrogen as energy vectors," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    9. Engstam, Linus & Janke, Leandro & Sundberg, Cecilia & Nordberg, Åke, 2025. "Optimising power-to-gas integration with wastewater treatment and biogas: A techno-economic assessment of CO2 and by-product utilisation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 377(PB).
    10. Trowell, K.A. & Goroshin, S. & Frost, D.L. & Bergthorson, J.M., 2020. "Aluminum and its role as a recyclable, sustainable carrier of renewable energy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    11. Mikovits, Christian & Wetterlund, Elisabeth & Wehrle, Sebastian & Baumgartner, Johann & Schmidt, Johannes, 2021. "Stronger together: Multi-annual variability of hydrogen production supported by wind power in Sweden," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(PB).
    12. Gorre, Jachin & Ortloff, Felix & van Leeuwen, Charlotte, 2019. "Production costs for synthetic methane in 2030 and 2050 of an optimized Power-to-Gas plant with intermediate hydrogen storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Bedoić, Robert & Dorotić, Hrvoje & Schneider, Daniel Rolph & Čuček, Lidija & Ćosić, Boris & Pukšec, Tomislav & Duić, Neven, 2021. "Synergy between feedstock gate fee and power-to-gas: An energy and economic analysis of renewable methane production in a biogas plant," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 12-23.
    14. Shaojie Song & Haiyang Lin & Peter Sherman & Xi Yang & Chris P. Nielsen & Xinyu Chen & Michael B. McElroy, 2021. "Production of hydrogen from offshore wind in China and cost-competitive supply to Japan," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-8, December.
    15. Zhong, Like & Yao, Erren & Zou, Hansen & Xi, Guang, 2022. "Thermodynamic and economic analysis of a directly solar-driven power-to-methane system by detailed distributed parameter method," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 312(C).
    16. Tao, Jianjian & Zhang, Yihan & Wei, Xuezhe & Jiang, Shangfeng & Dai, Haifeng, 2024. "Optimization of fast cold start strategy for PEM fuel cell stack," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 362(C).
    17. Kimon Keramidas & Silvana Mima & Adrien Bidaud, 2024. "Opportunities and roadblocks in the decarbonisation of the global steel sector: A demand and production modelling approach," Post-Print hal-04383385, HAL.
    18. Xiong, Kang & Hu, Weihao & Cao, Di & Li, Sichen & Zhang, Guozhou & Liu, Wen & Huang, Qi & Chen, Zhe, 2023. "Coordinated energy management strategy for multi-energy hub with thermo-electrochemical effect based power-to-ammonia: A multi-agent deep reinforcement learning enabled approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 216-232.
    19. Zhang, Hanfei & Wang, Ligang & Van herle, Jan & Maréchal, François & Desideri, Umberto, 2020. "Techno-economic evaluation of biomass-to-fuels with solid-oxide electrolyzer," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
    20. Zhu, Yanxi & Zhang, Yixiang & Bin, Shiyu & Chen, Zeyi & Zhang, Fanhang & Gong, Shihao & Xia, Yan & Duan, Xiongbo, 2024. "Effects of key design and operating parameters on the performance of the PEM water electrolysis for hydrogen production," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-40375-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.