Scalable metamaterial thermally sprayed catalyst coatings for nuclear reactor high temperature solid oxide steam electrolysis.

Hossain, Mamdud; Faisal, Nadimul; Prathuru, Anil; Kurushina, Victoria; Cai, Qiong; Horri, Bahman; Soman, Ajith

Abstract

The UK government in their 2021 Hydrogen Strategy recognises that the low carbon hydrogen plays a critical role in achieving transition to net zero and sets a target of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for use across the economy. Unfortunately, pure hydrogen cannot be found in nature and it has to be produced. Currently, the most common hydrogen production method is the steam methane reformation, where methane gas is reacted with steam to produce hydrogen. This process is very carbon incentive, but can be made low carbon with the carbon capture and storage, which does not exist yet. A better alternative is to use renewables electricity such as from solar, wind, nuclear to split water into hydrogen in an electrolyser achieving zero carbon hydrogen. Since there is virtually no zero-carbon hydrogen production plant in the UK, it will require a significant and rapid scale up of activities in research and commercialisation. There are eight electrolysers at different stages of development and among those, solid oxide electrolyser technology has many attractive advantages to scale up to industrial scale. Its high temperature operation is suitable for utilising waste heat from industry. Moreover, excess stream generated in nuclear power plant can be easily utilised for producing hydrogen using solid oxide electrolyser. This talk will explore in detail the design of a solid oxide electrolyser including the use of different materials, how the design of each components affects the performance of an electrolyser and how optimising each component and operating parameters will improve performance. Finally, this talk will give a summary of our recently funded Energy and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) project on scalable metamaterial thermally sprayed catalyst coatings in improving solid oxide electrolyser performance. The talk will explain how metamaterial can be optimised through CFD modelling and experimentation, how it can improve flows inside an electrolyser and how it offers increased current density using similar size of an electrolyser.

Citation

HOSSAIN, M., FAISAL, N., PRATHURU, A., KURUSHINA, V., CAI, Q., HORRI, B. and SOMAN, A. 2022. Scalable metamaterial thermally sprayed catalyst coatings for nuclear reactor high temperature solid oxide steam electrolysis. Presented at the 4th International conference on energy and power 2022 (ICEP2022), 11-13 December 2022, Dhaka, Bangledesh: [virtual conference].

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: 4th International conference on energy and power 2022 (ICEP2022)
• Start Date: Dec 11, 2022
• End Date: Dec 13, 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 13, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 13, 2023
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Hydrogen; H2 fuel cells; Production; Storage; Transportation; Thermal spray coating
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1938057