Chennai start-up developing membrane-less electrolyser for $1/kg hydrogen

A Chennai-based start-up, New Trace, is developing an electrolyser which it hopes will deliver hydrogen at $1/kg. This, it seeks to achieve by producing a membrane-less electrolyser, in which hydrogen and oxygen split and go their own ways.

                                                       Prasanta Sarkar

The start-up has already produced the prototype, which is currently being tested. “We are building a 100 kW electrolyser by 2022, which will produce hydrogen at 1.63 kg/hr; we plan to scale it up to 1 MW by 2025, which will then be capable of producing 18.76 kg/hr,” Sarkar has told the Business Line newspaper.

The company claims that its electrolysers will be five times cheaper than the conventional ones and can scale massively to meet the global demand.

In New Trace's equipment, there is natural separation of hydrogen and oxygen using a high flow of the 3D printed electrolyte in the tubes, and gravity. 

Since the evolution of hydrogen and oxygen happen at different electrodes, they can simply be flushed out by the force of the electrolyte (sometimes through pores in the electrodes).