Proton Flow Reactor System

closed

The Proton Flow Reactor System project aims to develop an integrated system for storage of electricity from renewable energy and export the stored energy as hydrogen within hydrogenated carbon-based material.Key resultsA novel ‘proton flow reactor’ (PFR) system for producing hydrogenated carbon(C)-based powder for bulk export has been developed. This reactor – a novel and scaled-up extension of RMIT’s innovative proton battery concept – uses electricity from renewables to split water and charge a stream of C-particles in a slurry electrode with the protons produced. The system is zero-emission and environmentally-benign. It offers a way to export a hydrogen-rich solid carbon material charged using renewable energy, as well as to store intermittent renewable energy on electricity grids at various scales.TRL has increased from 2 to 4The Proton Flow Reactor System (PFR) is technically feasible. Hydrogen can be stored in a PFR with a flow-in flow-out paste electrode, drying the paste to a powder for storage externally and reconstituting the paste at a later time for recovery of the stored energy. 60% of the Hydrogen stored in the electrode after charging was recovered and consumed in the electricity generation.The energy efficiencies of the small-scale paste proton flow reactor during the hydrogen-charging (electricity supply) process, and discharging (electricity delivery) process, have been measured, and a value of 15% for the roundtrip energy efficiency for the PFR system overall obtained. Projected improvements could see that rise to 57% for a full-scale system after commercialisation.An alternative mode of operating a PFR in discharge mode has been discovered that allows direct generation of hydrogen gas from the hydrogenated carbon material. Importantly, this discovery opens up the prospect of the PFR system being used to export and supply hydrogen gas for fuel-cell vehicles for transportation, rather than solely for electrical energy storage.A nearly three-fold increase in the gravimetric hydrogen storage capacity in a paste-electrode proton reactor/battery has been achieved by making a number of modifications to the PFR design. The previously best achieved capacity for hydrogen storage in ACPR was raised from 0.8 wt% to 2.23 wt%, which is more than twice the maximum electrochemical hydrogen storages reported to date in carbons with acidic electrolytes.

High