Award: HI ERN doctoral student receives Best Poster prize
Tartu (Estonia), April 17, 2024 - Doctoral student Carolin Sophie Igel was awarded the prize for the best poster at the 8th Baltic Electrochemistry Conference.
In her poster entitled "Activity and Dissolution Stability of Ir/Ru-based Electrocatalysts Tested in a Model Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzer", Carolin Sophie Igel presented an application-oriented laboratory study as part of her master's thesis on the relationship between activity and stability of different iridium/ruthenium electrocatalyst mixing ratios.
State-of-the-art proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWE) rely on anodes with high iridium loading to ensure the required device lifetime and performance for hydrogen production. However, since iridium is an extremely rare and expensive material, current research efforts are aimed at using anodes with lower iridium oxide loading, reducing the iridium content in the catalyst or replacing iridium with other, more abundant, materials.
In this context, ruthenium (Ru) has been extensively studied with aquatic model systems (AMSs), such as the rotating thick disk electrode (RDE) or scanning flow cell (SFC). However, the knowledge gained from idealized setups cannot necessarily be transferred to real applications. Therefore, a metal-free electrolytic cell test station was used in the current work to quantify the dissolution of the electrocatalyst during the operation of the electrolyzer. The setup enables a parallel investigation of the activity and dissolution rates of different mixing ratios of the Ir/Ru catalyst.
Carolin Sophie Igel studied Applied Chemistry with a focus on Technical Chemistry at the Georg Simon Ohm Technical University of Nuremberg. After completing her master's degree in March 2023, she worked as an R&D engineer for Testing, Validation and Electrochemistry in the Hydrogen Industrial department at SCHAEFFLER Technologies in Herzogenaurach. In February 2024, she started her PhD studies in the Electrochemical Energy Conversion research group at HI ERN. As part of this, she is developing a realistic test setup to investigate the electrochemical activity and dissolution behavior of electrocatalysts in alkaline and anion exchange membrane (AEM) water electrolysis.
