Advanced Material and Design Approaches for the Catalyst Layer/ Electrode Assembly in Electrochemical Energy Applications

预计到2020年，“清洁技术领域”将成为全球第三大产业领域，全球市场规模约为3万亿美元。加拿大的收入预计约为620亿美元，加拿大在该部门的直接就业人数将大幅增加。国际社会已经认识到在能源供应和使用方面采取更清洁和更可持续的解决方案的重要性。一个很大的挑战是通过储能来改善电网管理和能源分配，以引入可再生能源等新能源，并在不弃电和能源损失的情况下更好地利用能源。此外，交通运输部门正朝着电气化的方向发展，最终目标是实现零排放车辆。包括电池、电解槽和燃料电池在内的电化学系统有望成为实现这些目标的为数不多的综合长期解决方案之一。特别是，氢气的生产/转化被视为“电力到天然气”管理达到太瓦水平的关键，氢基运输（电动交通）被视为中程到远程运输的解决方案，其填充和基础设施与现状相似。加拿大在燃料电池、电解槽和氢技术的发展方面一直处于世界领先地位，这些技术目前正在许多国际商业和示范应用中得到应用。关于电化学能量储存和转换，重要的是进一步降低成本（也与性能有关）以供商业采用。本研究的重点是通过使用易于制造的新型低成本纳米催化剂层方法，以及实施新的性能增强策略，减少聚合物电解质膜（PEM）电解槽中氢气生产的能量损失。该研究还将重点研究和开发一种新型可扩展的低成本燃料电池，该燃料电池具有无膜结构和超低催化剂负载，结合了氧化还原液流电池和PEM燃料电池的各个方面。这种新型燃料电池可以为能源系统提供许多潜在的优势，特别是在效率和燃料灵活性方面。

The “cleantech sector” is expected to be the third largest global industrial sector by 2020 with a global market size of approximately 3 trillion dollars. Canadian revenues are projected to be about 62 billion with a significant increase in direct Canadian employment in this sector. The global community has recognized the importance of moving to cleaner and more sustainable solutions to energy provision and use. A large challenge is to improve electric grid management and energy distribution with energy storage in order to bring on new sources of energy such as renewables, and to get better utilization of energy without curtailment and energy loss. In addition the transportation sector is moving towards electrification with the ultimate goal of zero emission vehicles. Electrochemical systems including batteries, electrolysers, and fuel cells provide the promise of being one of the few comprehensive longer-term solutions to meeting these goals. In particular, hydrogen production / conversion is seen as a key to “power to gas” management up to the terawatt level and hydrogen based transportation (e-mobility) is seen as a solution to mid- to long-range transportation with filling and infrastructure similar to the status-quo. Canada has been one of the world leaders in the development of fuel cell, electrolyser, and hydrogen technologies which are now being used in a number of international commercial and demonstration applications. With respect to electrochemical energy storage and conversion it is important that cost (also related to performance) is further reduced for commercial uptake. The proposed research focuses on reducing the energy losses for the production of hydrogen in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolysers by using new low cost nano-catalyst layer approaches that are easily manufactured, and implementing new performance enhancement strategies. The research will also focus on the research and development of a new scalable low cost fuel cell with a membrane-less architecture and ultralow catalyst loading that incorporates aspects of the redox flow battery and the PEM fuel cell. The new fuel cell can potentially offer a number of advantages to energy systems particularly with respect to efficiency and fuel flexibility.