Chemical Engineering June 2020 - 7

Chementator
This self-sustaining cell
makes electrolysis more practical
INL
team of researchers from Idaho National
Laboratory (INL; Idaho Falls;
www.inl.gov) has developed a new
electrode material that simplifies
Solid-oxide
electrolysis cell
e-
Biofertilizer + Biogas
Solid-oxide fuel cell
H2O
O2
H2
e-
H+
between hydrogen production and power
generation, " says Ding.
behavior - meaning
that it can conduct electrons, oxygen ions
and protons within a PCEC. " We doped
nickel into conventional praseodymium cobalt
oxide, and we observed that this doping
strategy reduces proton migration drastically
and greatly improves electrokinetics, " adds
Ding. The triple-conducting characteristic
means that the PCEC can be run reversibly
without additional hydrogen fuel. " Starting
with steam as the feedstock, this a self-sustaining
operation to maintain the switching
The new material is also considerably simpler
to synthesize, since it involves fewer
elemental components than typical PCEC
electrodes, which may require rare materials
or more complex doping processes to manufacture.
Ding and his team have already
fabricated the new cells in industry-standard
sizes for adoption into multicell stacks or
modular installations. They are also working
to test the material's compatibility with
other chemicals to investigate other potential
PCEC applications, including the electrochemical
activation of natural gas for ethylene
and hydrogen co-production.
Three new biofertilizer-biogas
facilities will be built in the
Zachodniopomorskie region
of Poland. The plants are being
built by Ductor Oy (Helsinki,
Finland; www.ductor.com), a
Finnish-Swiss biotechnology
company funded by Esperotia
Investments Ltd.
Thermal energy-storage system using
phase-change materials
S
cientists at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Argonne National Laboratory
(Lemont, Ill.; www.anl.gov) have
developed a thermal energy storage
system for industrial processes that can capture
and store typically wasted heat for later
use. Originally conceived as a way to store
surplus heat from concentrated solar power
installations, the system is being refined for
other applications, including storing heat from
industrial combustion processes, solar-powered
desalination plants, combined heat and
power (CHP) facilities and heavy-duty trucks.
The device stores and releases latent
heat using specific types of molten salts
as phase-change materials that melt when
heat is captured from a process, then solidify
when the heat is released for later use. In
the development of the storage system, the
Argonne team, led by senior materials scientist
Dileep Singh, overcame a key limitation
of molten salts. While molten salts can be
effective as phase-change materials for retaining
heat, they are typically poor thermal
conductors, " so it takes too long for them to
absorb and release energy, " the team says.
To overcome this, the researchers devised
a proprietary method to integrate the phasechange
materials with another high-thermalconductivity
material. The composite material
system is sealed into a cylindrical module
and bathed in an inert gas. Heat stored in
the modules can be used to heat water to
create steam, for example.
The thermal storage devices can be made
in manageable sizes, such as that of a
55-gal drum, and they are modular in nature,
Singh says, so they can be scaled easily
by adding more of the modules, depending
on the application.
The researchers have demonstrated that
the system to work at temperatures over
700°C (1,292°F), and are working to integrate
it into commercial CHP units. They are
also working with various industry partners
to adapt the device for different applications.
ChemiCal engineering www.Chemengonline.Com June 2020
The plants will use 100%
poultry waste to create two
separate products, renewable
electricity and organic nitrogen
fertilizer. This will significantly
reduce greenhouse gas emissions
from both the energy and
agriculture sectors. Two of the
new plants will have installed
capacity of 0.5 MW and the
third will be 1 MW. All three will
be operational in 2021.
The three facilities will use
50,000 tons, or about 1% of the
total poultry manure produced
in Poland each year. Ductor
currently has similar projects
underway, including five to ten
new facilities in Poland and a
solid portfolio of projects under
development in Europe and
the Americas. The system was
patented in 2015, and the first
operational biofertilizer-biogas
facilities opened at the end of
last year in Mexico.
'green methanol'
As part of the " Power-toMethanol
- Green Methanol "
project, the Fraunhofer Institute
for Solar Energy Systems
(Freiburg, Germany; www.ise.
fraunhofer.de)
recently commissioned
a miniplant for synthesizing
methanol from H2 and
CO2. Featuring a measurement
technique with high temporal
and spatial resolution, the setup
enables research on methanol
synthesis, among other things,
within the framework of powerto-liquid
(PtL) processes on an
industrial scale. Here, the main
focus of the research is on dynamic
reactor operation and
unconventional gas compositions
using H2 produced by
(Continues on p. 8)
Edited by:
A
hydrogen generation and energy storage
via protonic, ceramic electrochemical cells
(PCECs). Conventional electrolysis technologies
use electricity to efficiently split water,
but are limited by their extremely high operating
temperatures - often as high as
800ºC, which make them cost-prohibitive
for wide market penetration. Furthermore,
at these high temperatures, conductor materials
can quickly degrade, explains Dong
Ding, INL chemical processing group lead.
The INL team developed a perovskitebased
oxygen electrode that not only enables
operation at considerably lower temperatures
(400-600ºC), but also exhibits
" triple-conducting "
Gerald Ondrey
7
http://www.inl.gov http://www.ductor.com http://www.anl.gov http://www.ise http://www.fraunhofer.de http://www.Chemengonline.Com
Chemical Engineering June 2020

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