Despite the advances in green hydrogen technology, the vast majority (some 96 percent) of all hydrogen is still produced from fossil fuels in a process which releases harmful CO2 into the atmosphere. This is because the electrolyser technology used to make carbon-neutral hydrogen is still very expensive to manufacture. A new project launched this month by the Technical University of Ilmenau (TU Ilmenau) hopes to dramatically bring down the costs of production.

The aim of "Stack Scale-up - Industrialization PEM Electrolysis" (StacIE), which is spearheaded by the TU’s Electrochemistry and Electroplating Group, is straightforward: to make the series production of hydrogen as an energy carrier more environmentally-friendly and cost-effective. The chemistry is simple enough for high school students to grasp: water molecules are split via electrolysis using an electric current to produce hydrogen and oxygen molecules. And if the electricity supplied comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar, the H2 produced is entirely carbon-neutral. However, the metals used in the catalyst materials, namely titanium or gold and platinum, are expensive.

As well as bringing down the cost of the components for proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers, StacIE will focus on simplifying the manufacturing process of stack technology. In stacks, individual electrolysis cells are combined into a unit and connected to form a series.

The consortium, which brings nine partners together with the TU Ilmenau, has ambitious goals. As well as reducing costs, it aims to increase the efficiency of the technology up to 75 percent by upgrading the electrolysers to the gigawatt scale and increasing their lifetime by over 80,000 hours. StacIE is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the umbrella initiative H2Giga.