Press release | 6 July 2021 | wrt

Fuel Cells and Electrolysis: Gold Medal for TU Berlin Researcher

Professor Peter Strasser awarded the European Fuel Cell Forum’s Christian Friedrich Schönbein Gold Medal

In awarding the gold medal to Professor Peter Strasser (TU Berlin), the awarding committee of the European Fuel Cell Forum recognized his “extraordinary contribution to the further development of fuel cell and electrolysis technology on the basis of green hydrogen.” The gold medal was awarded to Strasser at a digital ceremony held on 2 July 2021. Alongside batteries, hydrogen-based fuel cell technology is also one of the key technologies involved in storing electricity gained from renewable energies.

“I am hugely delighted by this award”, says Strasser, head of the Electrochemical Energy, Catalysis, and Materials Science Group within the Chair of Chemical Engineering at TU Berlin. “Any public mention of hydrogen technology provides an opportunity to explain its advantages for the mobility sector and industry.” These include the existing infrastructure of standard gas stations, which only need to be refitted for hydrogen fueling, and the fact that it takes just five minutes to fully fuel a vehicle using hydrogen. “It is true that there are also rapid charging points for battery-operated vehicles, but even these require at least twenty minutes for full charging,” he explains.

Despite this, there are still some barriers facing hydrogen technology. Peter Strasser has developed a clever trick to find a possible solution for two of these. This involves catalysts used both in electrolysis to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water using electricity as well as to later re-combine hydrogen and oxygen in fuel cells, releasing electrical energy in the process. “Modern electrolyzers use iridium as a catalyst and platinum for fuel cells,” explains Strasser. The problem here is that these elements are very rare, with iridium accounting for just one billionth of the Earth’s crust and platinum for five billionths. Although the catalysts are not consumed in the chemical reactions, this does make the devices expensive to manufacture in large numbers.

Nanocatalysts provide a solution

Strasser has now solved this problem using tiny nanoparticles measuring just a few millionths of a millimeter in diameter. He first presented this concept a few years ago by mixing a non-noble metal, such as nickel, with a noble metal, such as platinum. This produces alloy particles of both metals. When these particles are introduced into a corrosive environment, the less noble metal detaches from the surface, but the more noble metal does not. This process continues until only the platinum atoms remain on the surface. The core of the particles, by contrast, consists largely of cheap, relatively common nickel. “As the catalyst’s chemical reaction only occurs on the surface, this saves enormous quantities of platinum,” says Strasser. The need for platinum and iridium is thus reduced to about one-tenth. Strasser's technology is now an established practice and is used by car manufacturers such as Toyota.

Converting carbon dioxide obtained from the air

Today, Strasser conducts research using nanotechnological catalysts to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into useful hydrocarbons and basic chemicals together with water and electricity gained from renewable energies. For this process, carbon dioxide could be taken from the smokestacks of steel or concrete works or even directly from the air using electricity. Products of this technology might, for example, include methane and ethene, which could be used as fuel precursors, or even high-purity "green" carbon monoxide, the basic material for chemical polymer factories.

Professor Strasser

Peter Strasser studied chemistry in Tübingen, Stanford (USA), and Pisa. He completed his doctorate as a student at FU Berlin with Nobel laureate Gerhard Ertl at the Max Planck Society’s Fritz Haber Institute. Thereafter, he worked for a catalyst start-up in Silicon Valley in the USA and conducted research as an assistant professor at the University of Houston in Texas. In 2007, he was appointed professor of electrochemistry and electrocatalysis at Technische Universität Berlin. Strasser is visiting professor at Tongji University in China and has received numerous awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Faraday Medal, the International Association for Hydrogen Energy’s William Grove Award, the German Catalysis Society’s Otto Roelen Medal as well as the Max Planck Society’s Otto Hahn Medal. He has been one the world’s most cited researchers since 2018.

Contact

Prof. Dr.

Peter Strasser

pstrasser@tu-berlin.de

Organization name Chemical Engineering - Electrocatalysis and Materials