Accelerating the Adoption of Low-Temperature Electrolysis for Hydrogen Production

Dear Colleagues,

Increasing amounts of low-cost low-carbon electricity are enabling new opportunities to shift electricity to other products to decarbonize hard-to-electrify industrial and transportation sectors of our economy. By whatever name you like to use (and there are many) – Power-to-Gas, Electrons-to-Molecules, Power-to-X, Hydrogen Production, Water Electrolysis – all of them involve transforming electricity to energy stored in molecular bonds. One uniting characteristic is the idea that this approach possesses the ability to scale to levels that will enable meaningful near-term decarbonization. With this in mind, the non-binding guidance below contains this theme of scaling to GW-levels to help reduce costs, impact markets and reduce the carbon intensity of the products. The topics focus on system-level scaling and manufacturing, and intentionally removes focus from the ever-important, but often researched, cell- and stack-level challenges. 

Topics for this Special Issue include, but are not be limited to, the following research, development and demonstration (RD&D) areas of low-temperature water electrolyzer systems:

• System scaling (10MW – 1 GW) to reduce capital cost
• Manufacturing initiatives to reduce capital cost
• Close- and direct-coupling of renewable electricity sources to the hydrogen-producing electrolyzer stack
• Challenges and opportunities to reduce rectifier (AC/DC) power conversion costs
• It’s Starting: Operational case studies that are already decarbonizing an industrial process or producing drop-in direct replacements for fossil fuels
• An Eye to the Future: Emerging technologies, like alkaline exchange membrane-based systems, that show promise in reducing costs.

Dr. Kevin Harrison
Dr. Katherine E. Ayers
Dr. Monjid Hamdan
Guest Editors

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