Development of a Novel Niobium-based Porous Transport Layer for Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyser Applications

质子交换膜(PEM)电解水被认为是利用可再生能源生产高纯氢的最有前途的技术，并已进入商业化应用的早期阶段，剩下的挑战包括需要降低生产成本和提高电池的耐用性。多孔传输层(PTL)对电池的性能和耐久性起着重要的作用。在质子交换膜电解槽的阳极侧，一般采用钛基材料作为PTL。然而，钛很容易在表面形成一层薄薄的氧化物，它会降低导电性。因此，PTL表面涂有大量贵金属，以确保长期运行的正常性能，这是PEM水电解槽的高投资成本。为了克服这一挑战，应开发低成本、高耐久性的涂料，以加快该技术的大规模生产。在这个项目中，将用铌基材料取代贵金属，并研究不同的处理和掺杂，以选择性能最好的涂层。该项目与魁北克和加拿大的氢能战略非常一致，并将在氢能领域创造就业机会和新的知识。预计在拟议研究项目成功完成后，将进一步扩大经过缩减的研究结果，以扩大规模的样本。

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyser is considered as the most promising technique to produce highly pure hydrogen from renewable energy sources and has reached the early stages of commercial deployment, the remaining challenges include the need to lower the production cost and to increase the cell durability. Porous transport layer (PTL) plays an important role in cell performance and durability. In general, Titanium based material is applied as PTL in the anode side of PEM water electrolyser. However, titanium easily forms a thin layer of oxide on the surface and it will reduce the electrical conductivity. Therefore, PTLs are coated with high amounts of precious metals to ensure proper performance for long-term operation which is the high capital expense of PEM water electrolyser. To overcome this challenge, low-cost coating with high durability should be developed to accelerate the mass production of this technology. In this project, precious metals will be replaced with niobium-based materials and different treatment and doping will be investigated to select the best coating with superior properties. This project is well aligned with Quebec and Canada hydrogen strategy and will create jobs and new knowledge in hydrogen field. It is expected upon the successful completion of the proposed research project, further scale up of the down-selected research results will be carried out for scaled up samples.