EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

The traditional single cell preparation is usually complicated with several sintering steps to accommodate the chemical features of anode and cathode in single cell construction. Differently, symmetrical SOFCs (SSOFCs) require only one sintering step for both electrodes preparation, which minimizes the incompatibility interface problems and lowers the cell fabrication costs. Based on first...

Solid oxide fuel-assisted electrolysis cells (SOFEC) are electrochemical devices that perform conversion of low grade fuels, like biogas, into pure hydrogen, using low-grade fuel aggressive depolarization of the anode. As all solid oxide cells, SOFEC might operate at elevated temperatures, typically above 700°C. Contrary to the regular solid-oxide electrolysis cells (SOEC), SOFEC requires much...

Mixed conducting Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) type oxides are promising materials for application as air electrode materials for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs). Within the rare earth RP series Lnn+1BnO3n+1, first order (n=1) RP type nickelates with Ln=La, Nd, Pr and B=Ni show high oxygen diffusivities, high catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction...

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) are electrochemical devices which allow efficient conversion of various types of fuels to electricity in a process which takes place at elevated temperature, typically above 600°C. SOFC by itself has a heterogeneous layered structure which includes, among others, two porous electrodes which are separated by gas-tight ceramic electrolyte. This work discusses...

Solid Oxide Electrolysers (SOE), due to their high operation temperature, offer high efficiency of the hydrogen production and thermal compatibility with industrial processes. In order to maximize performance of SOE and to increase their lifetime, various modifications of electrodes were proposed. The precise adjustment of the electrodes microstructural parameters such as size and...

Solid oxide cells (SOCs) have been considered as attractive energy conversion devices because of quiet operation, fuel flexibility, and low emissions. Their efficiency is often limited by the air electrode performance, so various kinds of highly electrocatalytically-active materials have been proposed, most of them being Co-based perovskite-type oxides. However, copper-based oxides have...

Various alternative energy storage technologies are under development to balance the supply-demand mismatch of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind sources, which are not stable and strongly related with different factors including weather changes or geographic location. Reversible Solid Oxide Cells (rSOC) are one of the most promising energy storage and conversion devices, which...

In this paper, we present two approaches to synthesize nanostructured metal oxide semiconductors in a form of multi-layer thin films later assembled as a conductometric gas-sensors. First approach produces a combination of thin solid film of tungsten trioxide (WO3) with nanoclusters of cupric oxide (CuO) prepared by magnetron-based gas aggregation cluster source (GAS). Second method is a...

The electrodes of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are porous materials with submicron-scale microstructure. The electrode microstructure has a significant impact on the performance of SOFCs through the transport of ions, electrons, and chemical species, as well as electrochemical reactions. Some of the electrode degradation phenomena are also related to changes in the electrode microstructure...

In the presence of hydrogen (H) donating environments, the strength of high-strength metallic materials is limited by hydrogen-induced embrittlement. Since H embrittlement is caused by the interaction of H with crystal defects such as grain boundaries, dislocations and precipitated second phases, a thorough understanding of these interactions is needed. Atom probe tomography (APT) is a...

Gas hydrates represent a non-conventional material for capturing and storing small gas molecules such as CH4, CO2, and H2. The molecular confinement is based on weak Van der Waals interactions between gas molecules and clathrate cage. While water is an environmentally friendly host, CH4 is considered a transition fuel on the way to ecologically benign H2 fuels. The CO2 sequestration in gas...

Solid Oxide Cells (SOC) are some of the most efficient energy conversion devices for producing and consuming hydrogen. In this research, thermodynamic state analysis is applied to quantify a planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell stack's degradation during a long performance experiment. The experiment demonstrated an atypical result: a consistent increase rather than a deterioration of terminal voltage...

One issue regarding the use of renewable energies is related to storage. Within this frame, intermetallic compounds are key materials for energy transition as they form reversible metallic hydrides (${M}$H) that can be used to store reversibly large amounts of gaseous hydrogen in practical conditions or as anodes in Ni-${M}$H or Li-ion batteries${^{1,2}}$. Their general formula ${AB_n}$ (A...

Driven by the necessity to mitigate the effects of climate changes, future economy will be increasingly dominated by renewable energy sources. In this context, hydrogen will play a fundamental role in the energy transition from fossil to green sources. This gas can be easily produced employing water electrolysis, which currently relies on the use of noble metal electrocatalysts (like platinum)...

Green hydrogen is produced by water electrolysis using renewable energy. In the electrolyzer, at the cathode occurs the hydrogen evolution while at the anode the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) takes place. The OER is an energetically demanding reaction that requires a high overpotential to occur. Thus, a challenge is the development of new low-price anode materials capable to decrease this...

In porous anodes of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), correlation between heterogeneous pore structure and its permeability is investigated. Pore former was added during the fabrication of the anodes to form heterogeneous pore structure with bimodality in their pore-size distributions. The degree of Knudsen effect varies depending on the local pore size in the heterogeneous pore structure. The...

Long-term degradation remains the main issue for the viability of solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) technology as a practical hydrogen production system. The major specific degradation mechanism in SOECs relates to delamination phenomena at or near electrolyte/anode interface. The principle of so-called fuel-assisted electrolysis is to supply the carbon-containing species which can react...

Biogas is a renewable resource that can be used to produce green hydrogen. As the attempts to move towards a hydrogen economy are gathering pace, processes such as biogas dry reforming (BDR) are gaining significant attention. Ni-based catalysts have been extensively explored for this reaction because Ni has low price and exhibits good catalytic activity, especially if it is well dispersed on...

The existence of several concerns related to the increasing energy demand and the related environmental crisis indicates the need to identify innovative, effective and low-cost solutions. Photoelectrochemical water splitting is recognized as a promising strategy and it attracts particular interest for storing solar energy into the chemical bonds of hydrogen as fuel. Since overall water...

Nanoporous activated carbons (ACs) are widely used in different energy storage systems, e.g. as electrodes for supercapacitors and batteries. ACs also show great potential as adsorbents for hydrogen (Η2) storage tanks operating at cryogenic temperatures. These applications require large specific surface areas (SSAs) and micropore volumes to achieve the desired adsorption capacities. ACs may be...

In the framework of the European project HyCARE, supported by FCH-JU, the TiFe0.85Mn0.05 alloy has been selected to store ≈ 45 kg of H2 as metal hydride carrier (MH). The aim of the project is to store H2 produced by renewables for large-scale smart-grid applications, including the use of Phase Change Material for the heat management of the MH-tanks.
In this work, results obtained by...

Porphyrins are highly attractive materials toward hydrogen production from solar-assisted water splitting, owing to their outstanding light absorption and charge transport properties. Those features can be potentially improved by the extension of the π-π system through the fusion of multiple porphyrin units. In addition, the metal cation chelated in the porphyrin macrocycle can act as a...

The power-to-gas technology, which uses excess electricity from regenerative sources for generating hydrogen gas by means of electrolysis, represents a promising future concept for energy storage. Hydrogen gas would open up the possibility for storing large amounts of energy for long periods of time, and the already existing infrastructure of natural gas grids could be used for transporting...

Despite a lot of research, hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms are still controversially discussed. Especially the role of plasticity itself is underestimated in many cases. Hence, the investigation of deformation processes under hydrogen influence is a vital field of research.
In-situ electrochemical nanoindentation became a versatile tool for probing the impact of electrochemical charging on...

Much of the current hydrogen infrastructure is made of metallic materials that could be susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement or other changes in their mechanical behaviour. To investigate the reason for these changes, the structure of the materials must be understood at a near-atomic scale, which is possible with atom probe tomography. The current problem with measuring hydrogen in materials...