Electrosynthetic approaches to hydrogen production for a net zero future encompassing new materials paradigms

随着国际社会将重点放在开发低碳(或净零)碳技术上，必须开发高效有效的替代燃料生产途径。世界各地的主要政府都对使用氢气作为未来的燃料做出了重大承诺，并提出了几种可再生的路线来生产大量的氢气，用于交通运输以及家庭和工业环境。然而，在设想广泛采用氢气之前，需要解决氢气的运输和储存问题。作为一种能源载体，氨的氢含量很高，一直被认为是有吸引力的，因为这种氢载体已经工业化地大量生产，并拥有国际运输基础设施。目前氨的缺点是，合成氨的碳足迹很大，依赖蒸汽甲烷重整来生产合成氨所需的氢气。假设可以生产绿色氨，剩下的问题是是否有有效的富含地球的材料用于氨的催化分解，以及产生的气流的分离。在这个项目中，我们将开发新的氨分解催化剂，并将其与分离技术相结合：直接电解和渗透膜。这两个解决方案将提供互补的设备，这些设备可扩展，并且可以轻松地部署在需要氢气的位置。

As the international community is focused on the development of low (or net zero) carbon technologies it is imperative that efficient and effective routes to produce alternative fuels are developed. Leading governments worldwide have made significant commitments to the use of hydrogen as a future fuel, and proposed several renewable routes to produce significant volumes of hydrogen for use in transport and in both domestic and industrial settings. However transport and storage of hydrogen are issues that need to be addressed before widespread adoption of hydrogen can be envisaged. As an energy carrier ammonia, with significant hydrogen content, has been considered attractive as this hydrogen carrier is produced industrially at volume and has an international transport infrastructure. The current disadvantage with ammonia is that the synthesis of this has a large carbon footprint, relying on steam methane reforming to produce the hydrogen required to synthesis ammonia. Assuming that green ammonia can be produced, the remaining issue is the availability of effective earth abundant materials for the catalytic decomposition of ammonia, and the separation of the resultant gas streams. In this project we will develop new catalysts for ammonia decomposition and couple these with separation technologies: direct electrolysis and permeation membranes. These two solutions will offer complementary devices that are scalable and that can be deployed easily at locations where hydrogen is required.