| NSF Org: |
TI Translational Impacts |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | April 16, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | March 14, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1951216 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Anna Brady
abrady@nsf.gov (703)292-7077 TI Translational Impacts TIP Dir for Tech, Innovation, & Partnerships |
| Start Date: | April 15, 2020 |
| End Date: | November 30, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $750,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $949,999.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2021 = $50,000.00 FY 2023 = $149,999.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1714 W 26TH ST LAWRENCE KS US 66046-4206 (913)523-5819 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
4950 Research Parkway Lawrence KS US 66047-3944 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
STTR Phase II, SBIR Phase II |
| Primary Program Source: |
01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041, 47.084 |
ABSTRACT
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to make on-site hydrogen generation convenient and economically viable. Hydrogen is a chemical used widely in industry and serves an alternative fuel source for electric vehicles, increasing drive range and shortening refueling time, but adoption has been limited by the needs for refueling infrastructure. One method to address this is to create hydrogen by splitting water, alleviating the safety, logistical, and reliability issues associated with the delivery and storage of hydrogen, but existing technology has been associated with high capital and operating costs. The objective of this proposal is to advance water splitting technology, enabling a non-polluting, zero-emission hydrogen solution.
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop an advanced electrolyzer. The project will (1) synthesize the catalysts and fabricate these electrodes on an industrial scale; (2) characterize the relationship between electrode architecture and kinetic and mass-transfer limitations; and (3) identify the electrode architecture, stack compression, and flow rates required to translate the performance of these electrodes to an industrial-sized prototype. The project will utilize mathematical modeling to guide electrode architecture development and a three cell industrial-sized test stack for experimental testing before employing electrodes in a full 4 kg/day stack. Furthermore, the project will employ the electrodes in a 4 kg/day pressurized stack and integrate these components to produce hydrogen at 20 bar to the SAE J2719 standard of 99.998% purity. The projected targets for stack and system efficiency for the final system are 43 kWh/kg and 55 kWh/kg.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Green hydrogen, produced from renewable electricity and water with an electrolyzer, is critical to decarbonizing the grid and hard-to-abate industrial sectors. Today, alkaline electrolyzers are the most robust and lowest cost solution for green hydrogen production. As a mature technology, alkaline electrolyzers are viewed as having lower potential for future cost reductions. Avium’s breakthrough catalyst and catalyst deposition technology, developed in part through NSF SBIR funding, changes that. By circulating catalyst in the electrolyte during operation we have discovered that it is possible to increase alkaline electrolyzer efficiency to Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer levels. Our catalyst also significantly increases current density which is directly proportional to hydrogen production rate. Our new catalysts and methods also allow us to deposit fresh catalyst into an electrolyzer stack while it is running to regenerate the catalyst without the need to remove a stack from the system. This means that it may be possible to maintain high efficiency over the entire system lifetime and reduce or eliminate the need for periodic stack replacement. This opens up several routes to cost reduction: increased current density means the stack can be smaller, reducing the initial capital cost; eliminating the need for stack replacement saves additional capital costs; and finally, higher average efficiency lowers hydrogen production costs further. The outcome of this project was a scale-up and advancement of Avium’s catalyst technology by several orders of magnitude from lab-scale electrodes to a commercial-scale electrolyzer.
Last Modified: 02/23/2024
Modified by: Joseph Barforoush
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