What is HYPRAEL?
HYPRAEL is focused on developing advanced technologies for energy and cost-efficient compressed hydrogen production. The main goal is to develop and validate the next generation of AEL for highly pressurised H2 production (at least 80bar and preferable 100bar). To reach the main goal, the well-established and mature alkaline electrolysis (AEL) technology will be improved significantly beyond the state of the art.
Key innovations to avoid cost intensive downstream mechanical compression processes along advanced cell, stack and Balance of Plan designs for strongly reduced energy loss will be investigated.
Research on advanced and sustainable electrodes, separators, polymers and compositions and innovative architectures for advancing through upscaling and sustainable mass production of highly efficient electrolysers will be also addressed.
Advanced Technology
HYPRAEL will look at key developments to avoid expensive downstream mechanical compression processes along with cutting-edge cell, stack, and balance of plan designs for significantly decreased energy loss. Additionally, an immense increase in energy efficiency will be possible by raising the temperature to at least 120ºC.
HYPRAEL will achieve these goals and move beyond the SoA by performing research from the design and the advanced assessment of electrocatalysts and polymers to the engineering and process intensification of an innovative cell design in 4 phases:
Materials development for pressurized electrolysis with elevated temperature.
Screening of materials for applicability in pressurized electrolysers – both phases will be performed at lab scale/single cell 10cm2, 1-30bar, 80-120ºC.
Upscaling of the most promising developed materials in Phase 1 and 2.
Upscaling of developed materials and integration into an advanced stack validated first at pilot scale and demonstrated later at industrial scale (50 kW).
HYPRAEL is a Research and Innovation action (HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2022-1) with the topic “Development of low temperature water electrolysers for highly pressurised hydrogen production” (HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2022-01-03) under the HORIZON EUROPE Programme.
The project will put in place a collaboration mechanism with the European Joint Research Centre (JRC) in order to support EU-wide harmonisation.
Funding
The HYPRAEL project has received funding from the Clean Hydrogen Partnership under Grant Agreement No 101101452. This Partnership receives support from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation program, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.