Hydrogen has significant potential as an energy carrier and means of storing energy. Research on clean hydrogen has been a priority of the Department of Energy; two recent DOE awards will further support that work at the Lab. The DOE’s Energy Earthshot Research Center (EERC) program is funding the Lab’s Center for Ionomer-based Water Electrolysis (CIWE), which will investigate how to improve efficiency and drive down the cost of making hydrogen. The DOE also recently awarded funding to the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES) to accelerate hydrogen deployment in the California region. Lab scientists will play critical roles in supporting the University of California (a founding member of ARCHES), including systems analysis efforts (led by Hanna Breunig, deputy head of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems Department) and technical leadership (with Adam Weber as ARCHES’ Chief Technology Officer).
Adam Weber is Berkeley Lab’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Program Manager and leads the Energy Technology Area’s Energy Conversion Group (ECG), a multidisciplinary team of electrochemists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, theorists, and material scientists with active collaborations across industry, academia, and national laboratories. He spoke with Research News about the momentum driving hydrogen research at the Lab.
The Lab was recently granted two awards. Can you tell me the significance of the Hydrogen Earthshot and the ARCHES awards, and how they fit into the Lab’s hydrogen efforts?
The Hydrogen Earthshot award is focused on hydrogen production, in particular fundamental science leading to the optimization of electrolyzers that split water molecules to produce hydrogen and oxygen, for performance and durability. We’re looking in particular at the interfaces between the ion-conduction polymers or ionomers within the devices. It’s fundamental science, bringing in computation and experimentation to understand materials and interfaces so that we can come up with ideas to improve durability, efficiency, rates, and reduce costly materials.
The ARCHES award, on the other hand, is mainly about deployment. The Lab will be doing the master planning work, conducting systems analysis and providing technical leadership. We will provide analysis to the ARCHES consortium as it considers where to place projects and how to roll them out. Our work will evaluate benefits to communities, including consideration of equity issues, and inform ARCHES’ decisions on its initial investments.
These two awards feed into our existing hydrogen work, which is one of the broadest research efforts at the Lab. Our Lab is unique in that we have capabilities that cover the range of hydrogen-related technical challenges, from basic research to technology deployment. The awards build on an existing portfolio of work starting with The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) research in photoelectrochemical hydrogen production research that was leveraged into the HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials Energy Materials Network along with other technologies, the Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC) on hydrogen storage materials, the Hydrogen from Next-generation Electrolyzers of Water (H2NEW) Consortium, and the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck (M2FCT) Consortium.
We do a lot of systematic research but are also supporting deployment. This breadth allows us to wrap both basic and applied science into a full lifecycle assessment, to make sure we are working on relevant problems and also to allow much faster progress in discovery to deployment.
Which areas and divisions at the Lab will be engaged in the Earthshot and ARCHES work?
A broad swath of the Lab will be involved in these projects. ARCHES will involve our energy analysis side, including the Energy Technology Area’s Energy Analysis and Environmental Impact (EAEI) division, the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area’s Energy Geosciences Division, and ETA’s Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division.
The CIWE Earthshot work cuts across sectors and will engage the Advanced Light Source, Molecular Foundry, Materials Sciences and Chemical Sciences Divisions, as well as National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Applied Mathematics & Computational Research and Scientific Data Divisions. We are working on getting everyone together like JCAP and the Liquid Sunlight Alliance project (LiSA) did, sharing personnel who sit and conduct research next to each other in a true team science paradigm. Of course we also have external partners in CIWE and ARCHES, including university and national laboratory partners and industrial partners.
What are you most excited about with these new awards?
I’m thrilled that the Lab portfolio is getting seen and recognized. I’m excited to get industry input, to ensure we are working on the relevant problems and to delve deep into them. If industry is concerned about durability, for example, what does that really mean? I’m looking forward to bringing together computational and physical research for rapid analysis of ionomer interfaces – bringing virtual and physical data together. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
How did the Lab’s hydrogen program get started?
The Lab has been conducting hydrogen research for over three decades, going back to the seminal work by John Newman on fuel cells, Phil Ross on catalysts, and John Kerr on new polymers. More recently, interest in the role hydrogen plays in decarbonization has accelerated, and the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have catalyzed significantly more activity, investment from industry, and demand for research. We have been fortunate enough to be successful recruiting top talent in the field and with getting grants.
Do you have any advice for others about building a large scale scientific research program?
The key thing is to find people who are excited about what they do, who love their work and are happy doing what needs to get done. And then it’s about building a broad and deep capability at the Lab, and getting the key people to come up with an idea and buying into a vision. It’s about having strategic conversations and support from Lab leadership, the Directorate, and program management. It’s not just about the science; everything has to go right as well for these larger initiatives to be successful. Kristin Balder-Froid from the Strategic Partnerships Office can share a guidebook for large initiatives and projects, called the Large Scale Proposal Playbook, which offers many of these tips.
What do you enjoy about hydrogen research?
I like working with devices and transport phenomena. I like working with complicated things, and in fuel cells and electrolyzers, everything in chemical engineering is occurring at the same time and with the addition of electric potential. It is interesting to imagine, if you were a molecule in that environment, what you would be seeing, what your environment would be, and how it would affect you. It’s fun to decouple complex things, and make them simpler in models so that you can predict behavior and have a more complete understanding of what is occuring. And of course I’m a strong believer in hydrogen – I believe it is critical to decarbonizing key sectors better and faster.
For more information:
Berkeley Lab Hydrogen Research