Thursday, 13 October 2022: 09:20
Room 215 (The Hilton Atlanta)
Novel protonic ceramic electrochemical cells (PCECs) are manufactured and tested at Idaho National Labs with the intention of scaling these materials for industrial application and market penetration. The focus of the presented work is to develop methodologies that can be used to translate the novel research executed at INL to industrial manufacturing and testing. The appeal to invest effort toward PCEC technology stems from a favorable efficiency, high proton conductivity, and low activation energy at operating temperatures between 400-600°C leading to greater performance and better durability than oxygen conducting solid ceramic electrochemical cells with the promise to reduce the cost. The challenge with PCEC arises from obstacles in the materials that project concerns of unreliability. Presently these concerns are being addressed at INL by implementing robust quality management (QA/QC) methodologies to ensure repeatable and reproducible fabrication, data, and results. From raw power supply to utilize conventional ceramic manufacturing and power spray coating to the design of PCEC, we successfully transitioned from 10 mm and 1” button to planer 5x5cm, and 10x10cm cells. The PCEC have been long term tested for 1000 hours under electrolysis conditions at 600°C resulting in a current density of -0.7 A/cm2 operated at 1.3V. The outcomes of these efforts effectively demonstrate that manufactured PCEC technology can successfully contribute to the increasingly diversifying energy portfolio of global economies that are beginning to invest in green hydrogen production as well as flexible chemical manufacturing pathways (e.g. CO2 conversion and ammonia synthesis).