Development of co-electrolysis using CO2 and water

Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cells (SOEC) promise high efficient conversion of renewable electricity into hydrogen and, via hydrogen, into other products. The current state-of-the-art makes use of materials and designs developed for solid oxide fuel cells and improvements in efficiency can be achieved by optimising these materials and designs for SOEC.

The topic therefore asks for:

• Novel cell structure and design, including novel electrolyte products and/or new developed electrodes
• Design and development of the co-electrolysis process (materials, reactor, operating conditions) towards direct fuel production
• Validate the co-electrolysis operation for different targeted outlet H2/CO compositions depending on the synthetic fuel to be produced
• Validate its operation with durations over 1,000 hours targeting and defining adapted designs and/or operating conditions to achieve degradation rates below 1% efficiency and 1,000h lifetime

Optionally p

The establishment of the hydrogen economy is constrained by different factors, such as handling and storage. On the other hand, hydrogen could be used in large amounts to synthetize gas and liquid hydrocarbons, whose system of storage and distribution are well established. Co-electrolysis of water and CO₂ to produce H2 and CO is one of the most promising ways to convert electricity into a syngas. Water plus CO₂ co-electrolysis constitutes the corner point of power-to-chemicals and power-to-fuel strategies, for green chemicals, CO₂ recovery and electricity storage at large scale. Indicatively, Power to Gas, by means of the methane as energetic carrier, is a good example and the co-electrolysis process to produce hydrogen and CO as hydrocarbon precursors, is a very promising way on that.

The main challenge here addressed is to store excess renewable electricity in the form of hydrogen and CO. By producing syngas, co-electrolysis would enable various storage options like

Proposals addressing the described technology should carefully justify the current state of the art and the potential evolution of the technology until 2025, to be commercially available and competitive ex-aequo with the conventional syngas production technologies.

The project is finally expected to assess that co-electrolysis may offer a competitive advantage against state-of-the-art technologies for syngas production. The related business case should be part of the project results. The technical performances required to have a profitable business case together with low GHG emission shall be identified.

The proposal is expected to have the following impacts:

• Achieve near 50% conversion efficiency from electricity to syngas
• prove the concept of co-electrolysis in representative conditions (system scale and power range) as well as identification of real life application areas including the CO₂ sources
• increase the durability of the c