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

随着国际社会关注低碳（或净零）技术的发展，当务之急是开发生产替代燃料的高效和有效途径。全球主要政府已经做出重大承诺，将氢气用作未来燃料，并提出了几种可再生路线，以生产大量氢气用于运输以及家庭和工业环境。然而，氢的运输和储存是在可以设想广泛采用氢之前需要解决的问题。作为能量载体，具有显著氢含量的氨被认为是有吸引力的，因为这种氢载体在工业上大量生产并且具有国际运输基础设施。氨目前的缺点是，氨的合成具有很大的碳足迹，依赖于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，剩下的问题是用于氨的催化分解的有效地球丰富材料的可用性，以及所得气流的分离。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。这两种解决方案将提供互补的设备，这些设备是可扩展的，可以在需要氢气的地方轻松部署。

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.