Yara Growth Ventures invests in Dynelectro; electrolysis technology for low-cost renewable hydrogen
09 March 2024
Yara Growth Ventures is investing in Dynelectro, the developer of a method extending the life expectancy of solid oxide electrolysis (SOE) from two years up to ten years.
While SOE yields the highest possible efficiencies to produce renewable hydrogen and e-fuels, it has been suffering from system lifetime issues up to now. The investment is part of Yara’s ambition to decarbonize fertilizer production and enable the hydrogen economy.
Dynelectro’s approach also allows for integration of SOE with intermittent renewable electricity—a key requirement for large-scale adoption.
Electricity is the key driver for the cost of renewable hydrogen. While solid oxide electrolysis has the best potential for low cost, it suffers a niche existence due to system lifetime issues. We believe Dynelectro will overcome these issues and pave the way to make low-cost renewable hydrogen a reality.
—Björn Heinz, Investment Director and part of the Yara Growth Ventures team
The investment follows the company’s seed investment round, which was led in May 2023 by The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), Denmark’s national promotional bank and export credit agency, with contributions from Vsquared Ventures, a leading European deep-tech fund, and further local venture investors. The funding will be used for demonstration projects and further technology development.
This previous discussion of SOEC by Topsoe Haldor tells us where the biggest player in the field, with massive experience and expertise, is:
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/09/topsoe-confirms-fid-to-build-worlds-largest-soec-electrolyzer-plant-companys-biggest-single-investme.html
As I noted in the discussion there:
'Got the durability, right at the end of the webinair, of course!
Their design is closely tied in with their existing units producing CO, which is a premium market, so they have been using allied tech for years.
They say at the end that they are used to working in the petrochemical industry, where the standard for equipment is 25 years, so much of their plant will be designed around that.
You don't get that out of the stack though, and as they say high temperature is trickier than low temperature, where they can hit 8 years of durability, with their HT stacks not there yet, but not far off.'
Presumably their 'not far off' refers to tech similar to that which Dynoelectric hopes to deploy,
Posted by: Davemart | 09 March 2024 at 01:15 AM
SOEC systems have higher electrical efficiency than PEM or Alkaline systems but the high temperature operation creates other difficulties. The introduction of a review article (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261922014027) on SOEC technology has this to say about these difficulties:
"However, to fully exploit the benefits of its high-temperature operation, a key issue needs to be addressed: how to maintain its high operating temperature and where to get the heat for water vaporization from. Although high-temperature operation provides several thermodynamic benefits, it makes the system configuration more complex than that of low-temperature electrolysis. To maintain a stable operating temperature, SOEC systems must intimately integrate system components and adopt reliable high-temperature heat sources...
Although maintaining a high operating temperature of an SOEC system is an urgent issue, there are few research articles but no review articles that deal with the thermal integration of an SOEC system. At the system verification (experimental) level, previous studies mainly focused on the electrical performance of systems but placed less importance on the thermal integration analysis (refer to Section 4). Note that improving the thermal integration of a system can reduce the thermal energy consumption, thus allowing a higher system efficiency.
The main body of the article is behind a pay wall. The authors appear to be optimistic than in spite of the difficulties of high temperature operation that SOECs will still be able to outperform the lower temperature technologies. However, this superiority has yet to be demonstrated in real system.
Posted by: Roger Brown | 10 March 2024 at 07:52 AM
The main problem is lack of support for the plates, they might go to the tubular design which is easier to manufacture and less prone to failure.
Posted by: SJC | 10 March 2024 at 04:48 PM