DEVELOPMENT OF SECOND USE APPLICATIONS FOR IONOMER MATERIALS RECOVERED FROM HYDROGEN ECONOMY SYSTEMS

There is currently a large opportunity to recover high value ionomer from end-of-life Hydrogen Economy electrochemical systems. The current conventional way of handling these end-of-life materials is to incinerate the ionomer for the purpose of recovering the precious metals contained with the membranes. This process destroys the ionomer component, and could cause air emissions into the environment of the combustion byproducts. The technology developed by this SBIR project will recover the perfuorosulfonic acid ionomer component from the waste stream and re-introduced it into the market for second use applications. We have demonstrated in Phase I the feasibility of converting mulit-kilogram size batches of end-of-life water electrolysis membranes into fully functioning membranes for a new water electrolysis single bench scale cell. We have also demonstrated with repeated commercial sale of other membrane products made with the recycled ionomer. We have several letters of support from water electrolysis customer eager to test and then field systems made with this recycled polymer. Technical work will involve detailed study of the recycled membrane properties at full size production widths, and also the performance and particular lifetime in water electrolysis and fuel cell applications. Demonstration of recycled membrane lifetime in full size industrial water electrolysis systems will be the goal of the Phase II project.