New technologies for hydrogen fuel cell

There is a broad consensus on the need to achieve a more sustainable energy system, which allows reducing both polluting and greenhouse emissions, as well as external energy dependence. In this context, renewable energies play a fundamental role, as demonstrated by the more than 50,000 MW of renewable energy installed today in our country, which produced 46.7% of the electricity consumed in 2022. However, renewable energies are subject to climatic variations, which cause production that is not constant and sometimes difficult to predict.

Therefore, a vector element for energy storage and production is needed that allows these fluctuations to be limited, aligning production and demand, in order to obtain stability and energy security and all of this within a sustainability framework that allows the reduction of polluting emissions and of greenhouse gases, especially in urban environments, which are the most affected by anthropogenic pollution.

This energy vector is green hydrogen, which is hydrogen that has been obtained in a clean and sustainable way, through renewable energy sources, without generating polluting emissions. Hydrogen can be generated in a clean and sustainable way (through electrolyzers), and stored and subsequently transformed (through fuel cells) into electrical energy efficiently, solving the aforementioned limitations of renewable energy generation systems.

Under the above premises, the “Green Chemical Process Engineering” research group aims to advance hydrogen technology through the development of MEAs that use ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents and nanostructured non-noble catalysts. The research group has worked intensively on this line in recent years and holds two patents on this novel technology.

The incorporation of this new technology in the design of membranes and catalysts in hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers for hydrogen production aims to reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs of these devices while optimizing their performance. In this way, it will be possible to incorporate them into everyday devices for general use, with the positive environmental and economic impact that this would entail as they are devices for the production of renewable energy and at the same time, facilitating the incorporation of these technologies in high-quality products and large-scale hydrogen production.