LONDON, UK – Rolls-Royce believes in hydrogen so much that it wants to make it with the help of a new range of mtu electrolyzers. The company has announced its first step in the hydrogen production market with the recent acquisition of a 54 percent majority stake in a German electrolysis stack company.
Dr. Otto Preiss, COO and Chief Technology Officer at Rolls-Royce Power Systems, describes green hydrogen as “this fascinating technology, which is not a pipe dream but has great market potential.” To achieve that potential, the brand has already started working on its own mtu electrolyzers. Future customers of these systems will be able to either store hydrogen as renewable energy or process it further and sell it.
An electrolyzer helps produce green hydrogen by using water and electricity that’s obtained from renewable sources, such as solar power and wind power. The main component of an electrolyzer is known as a stack, comprised of hundreds of cells “stacked” on top of each other. The cell is where “the electrochemical reaction takes place.”
To make its mtu electrolyzers, Rolls-Royce will use the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) stacks developed by a German company called Hoeller Electrolyzer. Hoeller makes these stacks under the Prometheus brand, claiming that they are not only highly efficient but also cost-effective. That’s because the technologies they use help reduce the use of platinum and iridium as catalysts, which are known to be very expensive precious metals.
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