Maja Milosevic

PhD Student

In the transition towards a decarbonized energy system, hydrogen has been proposed as a promising energy carrier. Among many hydrogen production methods, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is considered as one of the most promising techniques for pure and efficient hydrogen production from renewable energy sources. However, the challenges that the commercial implementation of this technology faces are the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) taking place in PEMWE anodes, and the need for scarce noble metals as catalysts.  Noble metal loading reduction in PEMWEs is desirable, but catalyst degradation pathways under intermittent operation and high operating current loads at low catalyst loadings are still not fully understood.

The scope of my research is the post-mortem characterization of anode and cathode catalyst layers (CLs) to evaluate the primary catalyst degradation mechanisms present, and the development of a model full-cell electrolyzer setups. The designed setups, coupled to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS), will be used to in-situ characterize CL degradation during intermittent electrolyzer operation. The project will be carried out in close cooperation with the Electrocatalytic Interface Engineering (EIE) team at HI ERN and an industrial partner.