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BB2,
Alkamem has not been the subject of any commercial trials. AFC announced that 'samples' had gone out to interested parties, this is nothing to do with commercially trialling it, the recipients of it will give it to their R&D department to see if it is suitable for use in their products, with or without further development by AFC. That is not a trial, it is R&D testing and evaluation, then feedback to AFC so that AFC can work on developing better versions, which are then tested again, and eventually AFM might get to a version that the company can use in a commercial trial, which would then need to be announced by AFC, as Alkamem is then deemed commercially viable in that product.
Quite right BumbleB2......The 40kW system was kept very secertive until the formal announcement .
They do keep some things secret tho haggismchaggis1......like what exactly was sent to Estonia ?
Klunk,
The main points saying it's not an AFC electrolyser or Alkamem are:
1) AFC has never announced to the market that it has a commercial design for an electrolyser.
2) AFC have not announced that Alkamem is now a commercially viable product (it's still in the lab)
3) AFC has never announced any plans to manufacture an electrolyser
Every other product AFC is working on was announced way before we had a commercial product to go out for trials, and when they were deemed 'commercially viable and ready for trials', that was announced too.
AFC said 'several new product releases before the end of 2021", but these are unlikely to be straight into commercial trials, they'll still need to go through the R&D process in the lab until they are announced as 'commercially viable' before they get anywhere near something like a trial at Extreme E.
The reason products are announced so early in their life, is so that the whole market can put a value on those products and extrapolate a new fair valuation for the company, based on the increased product range. These products, if commercially viable and planned to go into commercial trials and then production, have to be announced to the market, as it is price sensitive information.
Haggismchaggis1
It was announced in the RNS 15th July 2020 that is was the plan to use electrolysis for hydrogen production ....(ii) remote manufacture of "Green Hydrogen" through micro-alkaline water electrolysis powered by the sun; ...That gave AFC plenty of time to aquire and announce a DeNora system and have it ready for the Extreme E launch in April 2021....but they did not have it ready ....so why not ?...it was at the Senegal race in May that the Electrolyser appeared....testing complete.
Klunk,
I cannot see any chance of it being based on Alkamem. We have not even announced we are working on an electrolyser let alone shown the market a prototype. If one was to be used at Extreme E it would have to have already been a proven technology, not something just emerging from lab scale trials.
In the Extreme E news we used "micro-alkaline water electrolysis, which removes the need to store and transport hydrogen to different race meetings"
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/extreme-e-afc-energy-hydrogen/
De Nora are the experts in this field and I suggest it is one of their electrolysers we used.
Three main electrolyzer technologies are used or being developed today: Alkaline (AWE) is well established and has been used in industry for nearly a century, proton exchange membrane (PEMWE) is commercially available today, and solid oxide (SOWE) is still in the development phase.
De Nora has, in recent years, maximized AWE operating current density (CD) and reduced its overall power consumption, pushing this technology toward PEMWE performances, but guaranteeing the overall lower CAPEX investment.
AWE electrolyzers equipped with the electrodic De Nora package inside are able, today, to provide the lower Total Cost of Hydrogen (TCH) for the Power to Hydrogen installation. An alternative to the De Nora “package” could supply, eventually, the active electrodes only, utilizing customers' proprietary drawings and therefore offering easy installation inside the existing electrolysis cells / stacks.
https://denora.com/products/applications/energy-storage/alkaline-water-electrolysis.html
If we go back to the announcement on the 28th January ....AB said . "AFC Energy will now move to the integration and delivery of Extreme E's upstream green hydrogen fuelling solution which will be delivered to the championship over the forthcoming months " . At the time it was unclear what they actually meant by that statement......We now know it was the solar array and electroliser .....that unit did not arrive until the Senegal race on the 29-30 th May ....where it was filmed being loaded onto St Helena ...so that system had 3-4 months of trials before it was shipped to Senegal.....so it could well be an AFC designed electroliser .
Extreme E is a demonstration of commercial technologies, it's not and never will be the place to test unproven technology or prototypes, that can and will be done out of the spotlight.
BB2,
I can't see AFC building a commercial scale prototype electrolyser and putting it into our most high profile event series until said device is proven elsewhere. The risk is way too high. Imagine the news "Extreme E event cancelled due to electrolyser failure".
So far all the Alkamem proof is in the laboratory. Until the publication on 19/10/2021 of the lab results, AFC would not have even attempted to start building a full scale prototype electrolyser, in case that design had to be changed if something appeared in the lab tests that affected the design.
Lutra,
Absolutely, although a lab scale patent does not equal a commercially viable electrolyser. The work done by Professor Varcoe and others to scale up Alkamem, strengthen and improve it since then seems to have nailed it though.
I said in my previous posts on 'new products before year end' that they could include an electrolyser, and with the "no significant degradation" that is much more likely since the info was published in October.
AFC's Patent No: WO2019069095A1 includes electrolyser claims, so they already have some IP in this area. The initial registration of a claim dates back to 2017.
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/060326963/publication/WO2019069095A1?q=pn%3DWO2019069095A1
FUEL CELL OR ELECTROLYSER ASSEMBLY
Abstract
A membrane electrode assembly (8), suitable for use in a fuel cell or electrolyser, comprising: - an anion exchange membrane (4); - two catalyst containing layers (3, 5) each disposed either side of the anion exchange membrane (4), and; - two gas diffusion layers (2, 6), each in contact with one of said catalyst containing layers 3, 5), - wherein the anion exchange membrane (4) comprises a solid state electrolyte, - at least one catalyst containing layer (3, 5) comprises particulates of the solid state electrolyte material of the anion exchange membrane (4).
Well done and thanks Hmch, that is most encouraging. Now we know that the S-series is what the market wants, AlkaMem could well be that much closer.? In the broker notes, they have never directly put a value on AlkaMem as a part of the 180p fair value. Just the L-series info to get us more up to date.
If AFC had created it's own electrolyser, it would have had to announce it to the market because that IP would significantly add to the core IP value of the company. That they have not done so, suggests that for now it is just someone else's electrolyser with an AFC box around it, potentially a De Nora electrolyser.
That however is not the end of the story though, as I discovered something a little while ago that is of great interest, involving Alkamem and electrolysis.
Again this involves our tie-up with Professor John Varcoe of Surrey University, the genius working on Alkamem.
"no significant degradation", so you can bet that De Nora will be all over this and could license out the technology as a Nafion membrane replacement for electrolysers, giving AFC a constant income stream where they do not have to manufacture anything themselves. The production lines could also produce membranes for the S Series at much better economy of scale, as they would be producing it for both electrolysis and fuel cell markets at the same time. This "no significant degradation" in electrolysis does leave it wide open for AFC to make it's own electrolysers, but I don't think they had one for Extreme E, or we'd have been told.
"Electrode and Cell-Level Insights to Achieve High Performance and Long-Life AEM Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers"
"Publication date 2021/10/19"
"The final topic of this talk will be durability of AEM electrolyzers. Specifically, we will report a highly durable AEM electrolyzer that was operated continuously for 720 hours (30 days) at a constant current density of 1.0 A/cm2 with no significant degradation in performance. Akin to the fuel cell work, end-of-life characterization is done to explore the degradation mechanisms at work during "normal" operation."
Links:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=NOxPp9QAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=NOxPp9QAAAAJ:4hFrxpcac9AC
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/MA2021-02421293mtgabs/meta
In the 'New Technologies Talk w/Julia Fry' (7/7/2021), Adam posted a different infographic that also showed a picture of an AFC labelled electrolyser. I took a screen grab of it at the time but I can't see how I can upload it - any suggestions?
Klunk well spotted
OK got it now, but again , I would have thought that if they now have their own in house electrolysis kit. Then that should be something to shout about..
Cannot find this info if I go directly to the AFC website...
Could just be a mock up?
This was first mentioned in the AFC Blog .....summer update on August 16th.....did not seem to cause much interest ...may have been more interesting to see the real thing in action ....but worth a second try ... https://www.afcenergy.com/a-summer-update/ (open up the page by clicking on the infographic tag )