To address climate change and its long-term multidimensional impacts, the Paris Agreement aims to limit global temperature increase. In order to fulfill its commitments to the agreement, a climate accord was signed in the Netherlands setting the goal of 49% reduction in CO2 by 2030. It is widely agreed that HYDROGEN will play a pivotal role in the low-carbon energy transition. Aiming for solutions that can be scaled up apart from efficiency, sustainability should be also concerned. Conventional electrolysis approaches are based either using scarce/expensive materials or are not compatible with an intermittent electricity supply of renewables, such as wind or solar energy. AEM (anion exchange membrane) electrolysers are an emerging solution to these issues since they are based on zero gap design and abundant materials. Currently there is a plethora of emerging materials with promising performance when tested at mild operating conditions. In the frame of a national consortium DIFFER aims to investigate these materials under realistic conditions in order to identify and overcome limitations with the design of novel electrode architectures and prototype cells.
This postdoc position involves:
- Conduct and coordinate research on the field of AEM electrolysis.
- Development and characterization of materials and gas diffusion electrodes
- Physicostructural material characterization (XRD, XPS, SEM)
- Assembling and characterization of AEM membrane electrode assemblies
- Evaluation of AEM cells at wide range of operating conditions from neutral to alkaline and from room to elevated temperature
- Gas phase analysis of reaction products (GC, MS, FTIR)
- Supervise PhD students on the aforementioned tasks.
- Preparation of scientific papers and conference communications.
- Contribution to the scientific and collaborative research environment at DIFFER.
The work will be conducted in the framework of the NWA-ECCM project "SCALE". In this project, DIFFER, TU/e, FONTYS, ISPT, Syngaschem, VSparticle and VECO precision have combined efforts for the successful implementation of hydrogen production and storage.