PD Development/evaluation gas diffusion electrodes for green hydrogen production

Two year PD in Catalytic and Electrochemical Processes for Energy Applications in the area of electrochemical hydrogen production.

The development of efficient, sustainable and flexible energy systems is a key challenge for Europe's energy decarbonisation and a corner stone of Europe's 2050 climate-neutrality goal, set out in the European Green Deal. In this context, competitive green hydrogen production is expected to play a key role.

Conventional green H2 production from water electrolysis suffers from the sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction and/or the use of critical raw materials. In the frame of the EU project (ELOBIO: ELectrochemical Oxidation of BIOmass) we propose to replace water oxidation with oxidation of targeted organic molecules aiming to two directions. Firstly to reduce the electricity consumption implementing less-energy (available as biomass)intensive reactions, both from a thermodynamic and kinetic point of view. Secondly to generate value-added molecular compounds after oxidation. To achieve this goal, it is however necessary to engineer electrocatalysts and electrolysis cells optimised for the targeted electrochemical process.