New project aims to make Atlantic Canada a green‑hydrogen research hub

Researchers from Dalhousie University are collaborating with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) on a two-year, $500,000 project that could help make Atlantic Canada a hub for green hydrogen innovation.

Drs. Mita Dasog and Michael Freund of the Department of Chemistry are leading the project that aims to identify and test promising catalysts that could serve as alternatives to the costly precious metals used in the production of green hydrogen.

The bulk of the project’s funding comes from a $352,000 grant awarded through the NRC’s Materials for Clean Fuels Challenge program (MCF). The MCF program is for collaborative research and development and is funded through the NRC’s Collaborative Science, Technology and Innovation program. Remaining funding will come from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and partners.

Shown right: Dr. Mita Dasog.

“Canada and the Province of Nova Scotia have identified green hydrogen to play a crucial role in meeting net zero goals,” says Dr. Dasog, an associate professor and Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Chair. “Hydrogen burns cleanly to produce thermal energy and/or electricity. It has the potential to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors such as material and chemical manufacturing industries, heavy-duty transport, shipping, and aviation.”

Commercially, green hydrogen is produced using a process called water electrolysis, in which an electrolyzer — powered by a renewable energy source such as wind or solar — splits fresh water into hydrogen and oxygen. Unlike other methods of producing hydrogen, which can involve the use of natural gas, coal, or non-renewable energy, green hydrogen does not result in any greenhouse gas emissions. A hindrance to more widespread use is that commercial proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers require precious metals as catalyst materials on its anode (iridium) and cathode (platinum).

For green hydrogen production to ramp up, it’s necessary to replace precious metals with something cheaper and more readily available.

“If we replace the current metals with other high-performing elements that are also rare, like palladium or rhodium, it’s still the same problem,” says Dr. Dasog, the principal investigator on the project. “Our focus is to start replacing precious metals with more abundant elements, but they have to perform as well as current catalysts do.”
 
Dr. Dasog hopes that the project will result in advancement towards making next generation electrolyzers that are cheaper and water-quality resilient. “Given the local interest in green hydrogen, it is also important that we create a path to manufacture electrolyzers without significant backlogs,” she says. “Moving away from precious metals will help mitigate some of the challenges associated with their supply-chain.”    

“Everyone wants to produce green hydrogen cheaply,” she adds, and proving that it is possible to lower the cost of electrolyzers by lessening their dependence on rare materials should help increase the Atlantic region’s adoption of green hydrogen.

The NRC’s hydrogen research has primarily taken place in Ontario and British Columbia, so the project also provides a chance to train graduate students and other highly qualified personnel from the Atlantic provinces. This project will help strengthen the collaborations between Dalhousie and NRC labs and build a path toward future opportunities to advance green-hydrogen technologies.