The Catrode Project - new Catalysts for Green Hydrogen production at industrial scale

Latent Drive Ltd已经获得Innovate UK的资助，用于开发Catrode，这是一种结合了催化剂和电极的产品，可以通过电解水来制造绿色氢。阴极易于批量生产、耐用、高效，是稀有铂族金属的替代品。潜伏驱动有限公司是一家早期的高科技初创公司。它的创始人正在追求电化学的工程方法，从学术思维转向工业规模生产。作为英国应对大流行的一部分，我们在2021年成功完成了氧细胞项目，得到了英国创新公司（Innovate UK） 7.5万英镑的资助。它结合了电解槽和燃料电池技术，从大气中提取纯氧用于医疗用途。这个项目让我们认识到传统电解水催化剂的高成本和脆弱性。英国政府的净零战略预计，到2035年，英国电解槽产能将增加1000倍，世界各地也在制定类似的计划。这种规模的扩大很难理解，但对于取代我们经济所依赖的大量化石燃料是必要的。目前，由海上风力驱动的电解槽依赖于稀有而昂贵的材料。最先进的电解技术适合海上风力发电，但酸性化学需要包括铱催化剂在内的特殊材料。我们需要将规模扩大一千倍，但世界上没有足够的铱和铂来生产绿色氢，以避免气候变化所需的规模。“目前用于PEM电解槽的铱和铂的产量仅能支持约3至7.5吉瓦的年制造能力，而到2030年每年的需求为100吉瓦”（IRENA报告2020）有大量关于绿色氢生产替代催化剂的学术研究发表。但是，从实验室到工厂，大规模生产这些催化剂需要投资和创新。潜驱解决了在工业规模上对不锈钢进行催化活化的问题，开发了独特的专有技术，并获得了专利保护。创新英国的支持意味着我们可以建造催化活化机器，其容量比现有实验室仪器大1000倍，足以激活由海上风力涡轮机驱动的兆瓦级电解槽的阴极。**阴极——催化剂是电极；电极是催化剂！**

Latent Drive Ltd have won funding from Innovate UK to develop the **Catrode**, a combined catalyst and electrode for making Green Hydrogen by electrolysis of water. Catrodes are simple to mass produce, durable, efficient and provide an alternative to rare platinum group metals.Latent Drive Ltd is an early stage deep-tech start-up. Its founders are pursuing an engineering approach to electro-chemistry, moving from an academic mindset to industrial scale production. We successfully completed the Oxygen Cell project in 2021, supported by Innovate UK with £75K funding, as part of the UK's pandemic response. This combined electrolyser and fuel cell technology to extract pure oxygen from the atmosphere for medical use. This project brought home to us the high cost and fragility of conventional catalysts for electrolysis of water.The UK Government's Net Zero Strategy projects a 1000x increase in UK electrolyser capacity by 2035, and similar plans are being made across the world. This degree of scale-up is difficult to comprehend but is necessary to replace the huge quantities of fossil fuels that our economies are dependent on.Electrolysers powered by off-shore wind are currently dependent on rare and expensive materials. State-of-the-art electrolyser technology suits off-shore wind power, but the acidic chemistry demands exotic materials including Iridium catalysts. We need to scale up a thousand-fold, but there is simply not enough Iridium and platinum available for the world to produce Green Hydrogen at the scale needed to avert climate change."_Current production of iridium and platinum for PEM electrolysers will only support an estimated 3 to 7.5 GW annual manufacturing capacity, compared to an annual requirement of 100 GW by 2030_" (IRENA report 2020)There is a large body of published academic research on alternative catalysts for Green Hydrogen production. But investment and innovation are needed to move from the lab to the factory, and mass produce these catalysts.Latent Drive has solved the problem of conducting catalytic activation of stainless steel at industrial scale, developing unique know-how which we have protected with patents. The support from Innovate UK means we can build Catalytic Activation machines that have 1000x greater capacity than the laboratory instruments currently available -- powerful enough to activate Catrodes for the Mega Watt scale electrolysers which are driven by offshore wind turbines. **Catrode -- the catalyst is the electrode; the electrode is the catalyst!**