Research Projects

Generation of hydrogen through water electrolysis is found to be a feasible and cost-effective solution wherein the water dissociates into hydrogen and oxygen through electrochemical reaction. The membrane based electrolyze especially the proton exchange (PEM)shows the significant advantage of high voltage efficiency, high hydrogen purity, rapid response, compact nature and can operate at high pressure. The operation of PEM electrolyser at high pressure significantly lowers down the total power consumption in comparison with the atmospheric PEM electrolysers coupled with gas compressors which ultimately reduces the production cost. The high-pressure mode can supply hydrogen at high pressure to the end-user, requiring minimal energy to further compress and store the hydrogen. The highest output hydrogen pressure has reached up to 700 bar with the average output pressure is in the range of 30–50 bar, in the current PEM electrolyzer. But still lot of challenges are associated in the manufacturing of high-capacity PEM electrolyze that can operate at extremely high-pressure operation and low energy consumption. The bottlenecks include fuel crossover, membrane stability and expensive catalyst. Traditionally, perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) polymer membranes are used as separators in electrolysis, but issues such as high thickness, limited mechanical stability, and excessive water uptake restrict their long-term applicability. Based on the above limitations the objective of the present proposal is to synthesis and characterization of aromatic backbone polymer membranes with their structural modification through blending and filler addition. Develop the membrane electrode assemble (MEA) with the synthesized membranes and hybrid electrocatalyst with further optimization and performance estimation. Finally understand their degradation behaviour. Based on these objective present work hypotheses will be used aromatic polymers such as polyethersulfone, poly etheretherketone, polybenzaimdizole which is further modified either by blending with an imide-based group or doped with fillers (graphene, carbon nanotubes) for proton conductivity enhancement and fuel crossover reduction. The solution casting and solvent evaporation method will be used for membrane preparation and characterize with Instrumental techniques such as FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM. Additionally, the hybrid inexpensive electrocatalyst will be used to make the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) through slurry and spray coating methods. Finally, the hot pressing method will be used to make a cell and further, the electrochemical performance will be evaluated at high pressure (1-150atm) and temperature (60-120°C) by supplying the water. The technical target is set to be 3.0 A/cm2 @ 1.8 V/cell with an electrical efficiency more than 65 % which includes 2.5% efficiency loss due to H2 crossover. To estimate the material durability and life span accelerated stress degradation studies will be carried out.