Recently, Momentum Conservation Green Energy's eHy-1002 porous IrO₂ catalyst has stably operated for over 15,000 hours, marking a key breakthrough in PEM water electrolysis anode catalyst technology and laying an important foundation for the industry's scaled application.
Technical Background and Industry Challenges
Proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis technology offers excellent compatibility with fluctuating new energy sources like wind and PV due to advantages such as low energy consumption, high current density, compact electrolyzer size, and wide power regulation range. As a core material affecting electrolyzer performance and cost, the performance optimization of anode catalysts has always been a key research focus in the industry.
The anode catalyst widely used in PEM electrolyzers currently is rutile-phase iridium dioxide (IrO₂), but it faces two major bottlenecks: first, the intrinsic catalytic activity needs improvement—the excessively high reaction energy barrier in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) causes the anode oxygen evolution overpotential to account for 30%–50% of the total electrolyzer overpotential, limiting system energy efficiency improvement; second, there is high iridium dependency—the membrane electrode iridium loading typically reaches 1–2 mg/cm², while iridium resources are scarce and prices are high, severely hindering the large-scale commercialization of PEM water electrolysis technology.
Product Core Breakthroughs and Highlights
Addressing industry pain points, Momentum Conservation's eHy-1002 porous IrO₂ catalyst achieves dual innovations in structure and material composition:
- Structural Innovation: Unlike traditional granular IrO₂, it exhibits a regular porous layered morphology with a porosity as high as 74%. The unique highly porous nanostructure fully exposes highly active edge iridium sites, synergistically optimizing the mass transfer, charge transfer efficiency, and catalytic activity of the catalytic layer.
- Material Composition Breakthrough: The bulk iridium mass fraction is reduced to approximately 70 wt%, balancing performance and cost while reducing reliance on precious metals, providing key support for lowering the total cost of membrane electrodes.
Core Performance Indicators
The eHy-1002 catalyst demonstrates excellent performance and stability even under low loading conditions with a membrane electrode Ir loading of only 0.75 mg/cm²:
- Performance: 1.96V @ 4A/cm² @ N115 @ 80°C, maintaining high current density performance at low iridium loading, breaking the limitation of traditional catalysts requiring "high loading for high performance."
- Durability: Stable operation for over 15,000 hours with a voltage increase rate of <3 μV/h, far exceeding the industry average in long-term operational stability and meeting the stringent material lifespan requirements for scaled applications.
Capacity and Application Services
The eHy-1002 porous IrO₂ product has now been validated by multiple industry customers, with a capacity reaching 600 g/d, possessing batch supply capability. For key clients, the company also provides catalyst slurry preparation and coating process guidance services, assisting customers in achieving technology implementation and production line adaptation. Test data and demonstration application cases will be continuously updated in the future to promote industry-wide development.
Technical Strategic Significance and Industrial Value
The breakthrough of the eHy-1002 catalyst not only addresses the energy efficiency and cost bottlenecks of anode catalysts in PEM water electrolysis technology but also has profound implications for the hydrogen energy industry's development: on one hand, reducing iridium dependency can significantly lower the production costs of PEM electrolyzers, accelerating their large-scale integration with wind and solar power; on the other hand, high stability and compatibility provide more efficient and reliable core material support for green hydrogen production, helping to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the "green electricity to green hydrogen" industry chain, and injecting key technological momentum into the realization of the national "dual carbon" goals and the high-quality development of the hydrogen energy industry.
