Argonne plays critical role in consortium to advance fuel cell and electrolyzer manufacturing

Argonne is part of a multi-laboratory consortium working to advance manufacturing to make hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers more durable, efficient and affordable. Argonne will focus on scaling up fuel cell and electrolyzer catalysts.

With the goal of advancing clean hydrogen manufacturing technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will play an important role in a new consortium of DOE laboratories formed to accelerate production of fuel cells and electrolyzers (DOE National Laboratory Consortium to Advance High-Volume Manufacturing of Critical Clean Hydrogen Technologies | Department of Energy).

The Roll-to-Roll, or R2R, Consortium is funded by the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) of DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, under two provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: The Clean Hydrogen Electrolysis Program and the Clean Hydrogen Manufacturing and Recycling Program. The consortium will develop advanced coating and drying technologies and ​“roll-to-roll” manufacturing processes to make fuel cells and electrolyzers more durable, efficient and affordable.

Electrolyzers and fuel cells are critical to producing and utilizing zero-carbon green hydrogen, which helps bring the U.S. closer to achieving its carbon reduction goals to slow climate change. The consortium’s goal is to de-risk and accelerate U.S. manufacturing of high-performance, low-cost fuel cells and electrolyzer systems to meet commercial-scale demand for hydrogen and boost industry adoption of clean hydrogen technologies.

“Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working together to develop and de-risk scalable technologies to synthesize catalyst materials for fuel cells and electrolyzers. The goal of the research is to reliably produce large quantities of material faster, more cost effectively and with reduced environmental consequences.” — Jessica Durham Macholz, an Argonne principal materials scientist

The R2R Consortium is led by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Along with Argonne and the following DOE laboratories, the consortium includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). Each laboratory will focus on a few specific research areas and collaborate within the consortium to achieve overall goals.

“Through close collaboration with industry, the R2R Consortium will help solve current manufacturing challenges as well as develop next-generation manufacturing technologies that will accelerate the transfer of clean hydrogen technologies from the laboratory to industry,” said Yuepeng Zhang, an Argonne principal materials scientist.

Zhang and ORNL scientist Alexey Serov are deputy directors of the R2R Consortium. Scott Mauger, an NREL senior scientist, serves as the R2R Consortium director. This leadership team directs the consortium’s activities, facilitates collaborations with other HFTO consortia and assists HFTO’s strategic planning of the consortium’s research focus.

Electrolyzers and fuel cells are key to transitioning hydrogen into widespread use. Electrolyzers split water molecules to make hydrogen. Fuel cells use hydrogen to cleanly and efficiently produce electricity for electric cars and other energy applications.

Compared to current methods for manufacturing electrolyzers and fuel cells, R2R manufacturing increases speed, improves efficiency, and cuts downtime and waste, slashing costs. R2R manufacturing deposits materials onto moving webs and is a scalable, continuous production process.

There are obstacles to overcome, however, to optimize multiple-step, multiple-variable processes during R2R manufacturing. The consortium will work to address these challenges by investigating and establishing comprehensive correlations between processing steps and parameters.

Both fuel cell and electrolysis technologies use catalysts to speed up chemical reactions. In the R2R Consortium, Argonne will lead catalyst materials synthesis scale-up. Scientists will leverage scale-up expertise and capabilities developed for lithium-ion batteries" href="https://www.anl.gov/science-101/batteries" target="_blank">battery materials synthesis scale-up in Argonne’s Materials Engineering Research Facility.

Jessica Durham Macholz, an Argonne principal materials scientist, will lead the consortium’s Materials Scale-up Science Thrust Area.

“Argonne and ORNL are working together to develop and de-risk scalable technologies to synthesize catalyst materials for fuel cells and electrolyzers. The goal of the research is to reliably produce large quantities of material faster, more cost effectively and with reduced environmental consequences. We hope to speed up the translation of new, high-performing materials produced by HFTO consortia to industry,” said Durham Macholz.

Collaboration among the laboratories is critical to success. Argonne will work with LBNL to characterize ink and coating by leveraging Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), one of the world’s premier storage-ring-based high-energy X-ray light source facilities. In addition, Argonne will work with NREL and SNL on ink formulation, coating and in-line metrology development. Argonne will support the consortium’s technoeconomic analysis by customizing its Innovative Manufacturing and Processing Assessment Calculating Tool. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

Argonne will also lead the ML development effort that utilizes artificial intelligence-assisted process optimization and automation to facilitate smart fuel cell and electrolyzer manufacturing. Argonne will work with the other national laboratories to achieve this goal.

The R2R consortium will support industry efforts through cooperative research and development agreement projects. An industrial advisory board will provide guidance on the consortium’s research objectives. The board will also foster engagement among manufacturers, materials suppliers and the hydrogen industry.

R2R activities will also complement the work of other HFTO consortia: Hydrogen from Next-generation Electrolyzers of Water (H2NEW) and Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck (M2FCT). The R2R Consortium will develop processes and pathways to scale up materials and components developed by H2NEW and M2FCT and will work closely with both consortia to ensure relevant metrics, methods and protocols are used.

Together, these efforts will help advance DOE’s H2@Scale vision and the Hydrogen Shot goal of reducing the cost of clean hydrogen to $1 per kilogram by 2031.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.