Mattiq and Heraeus Precious Metals have agreed to jointly develop and commercialise low-iridium catalysts for PEM electrolysers, aiming to reduce reliance on the rare metal.
The two companies have said they will shorten the traditional R&D-to-commercialisation timeline, “rapidly advancing low-iridium catalysts from prototype to industrial-scale solutions.”
H2 View understands that with current iridium loading requirements, PEM electrolysers will be limited in the scale of annual deployment.
As one of Earth’s rarest naturally occurring elements, iridium must be used efficiently to meet the growing demand for hydrogen production and other applications.
Mattiq will provide its expertise in electrochemical systems design, and Heraeus Precious Metals is a “world leader” in precious metals reclamation, processing and catalyst manufacturing.
Philipp Walter, Executive Vice-President of Hydrogen Systems and Head of Innovation Management at Heraeus Precious Metals claimed that together with Mattiq, the partnership “bolster [its] position as a leading innovator in electrocatalysis and support [Heraeus’] efforts in accelerating the energy transition.”
Jeff Erhardt, CEO of Mattiq, added, “By combining our core competence in electrochemical systems design with Heraeus’ world-class capabilities in material development and catalyst manufacturing, we can jointly accelerate the development of high-performance, low-iridium catalysts that can lower the cost of electrolyser manufacturing, ensuring their role in decarbonising heavy industry.”
In 2023, Mattiq announced a new portfolio of novel, highly durable alternatives to iridium, which would meet or exceed performances, with a much lower cost and great availability.
Read more:Mattiq develops portfolio of electrolyser component alternatives to iridium
Iridium: An indispensable, scarce metal for the hydrogen economy – so how can availability be ensured?
PEM electrolysis is pivotal for producing green hydrogen from renewable energy and is based on precious metals, namely platinum and iridium. The latter is especially scarce, as only around nine metric tons per year of primary metal are extracted by mines (and not likely to be significantly increased).
The required amount of iridium per gigawatt (GW) in PEM electrolysis currently averages 400kg/GW of electrolyser capacity; this is far too much to build the announced capacities for PEM electrolysis (more than 70GW by 2030) with the available amount of iridium.
Thrifting of iridium as well as the recycling of untapped streams is needed to safeguard the growth of PEM electrolysis. Here in this article, we’ll explain why and how to do so.
Continue reading here.
