Barcelona hosts LESGO’s 1st Consortium meeting

On May 27^th, the LESGO team gathered in Barcelona to share and discuss the latest advances of the European initiative.

Consortium meetings are generally very intense and tiring, but, at the same time, very productive and allow the projects to advance considerably due to the open discussions and sharing of problems and solutions between the team. Meetings in person are fundamental and that is why on May 27^th, the LESGO consortium partners got together to review the status of the project and set new goals for the second part of the initiative.

ICFO Prof. Jordi Martorell, the coordinator of the project, introduced the meeting and gave an overview of the status of the initiative and the challenges waiting ahead. Subsequently, all partners presented the progress made during the first half of LESGO. Finally, Carles Ros, post-doc at ICFO, conducted an open-discussion round table, inviting partners to evaluate the progress of the specific work packages, the risks and challenges found so far, and the possible solutions to be implemented.

lesgo 1st consortium meeting

IMG_20220527_154642

IMG_20220527_122213_small

Explaining the synthesis of graphene oxide

Amaya Ortega from Graphenea, leader of WP2, explained the synthesis of Graphene Oxide via different chemical routes to control the oxidation degree of GO, starting from graphite and adding different amounts of oxidant and carrying out the reaction at different temperatures (low and high) and for different timescales. They also proceeded to characterize the graphene oxide-based materials depending on the concentration of the oxidant, to actually see that the high level of oxide does not affect chemically the resultant composition.

As part of this work package, Inna Khairani and Bilal Goecke online, from the Wuppertal University (BUW), talked about nanoparticle synthesis, in particular, alloy nanoparticle synthesis and the methods or techniques that could be employed to produce the material at large scales. They mentioned the production and further characterization of the nanoparticles using a synchrotron XRD. They characterized the morphology and size of the nanoparticles in water, acetone and dried acetone to understand the chemical composition of the shell and the core of the nanoparticle. The nanoparticles can be deposited in water onto the reduced rGO by the downstream method. The position on the support material gives a better dispersion, less agglomeration and prevents nanoparticle growth over time.

Benjin Jin from Aalto University focused on explaining the anode engineering to develop an effective method for a strong interaction between the NiFe nanoparticles mentioned in work package 2 and the anode terminal. Both Aalto University and BUW work together to characterize them. They help characterize and validate the electrochemical OER performance and stability. Three catalysts were prepared for the LESGO project and Benjin went into detail on these 3 materials, giving insights about their performance and in particular, stability and durability.

More about the work packages

As for the electrodes and catalytic configuration work package WP3, Nina Carretero from IREC explained the synthesis and characterization. She went over the demonstration of an efficient GO electrochemical hydrogenation with significant selectivity, compared with the competitive H2 formation. Experiments have been performed both on fixed GO and in fow cell configuration. Various modifications and overlayers have been studied for the cathode and, together with a durable anode, results have been used to determine the proper operating conditions of the EC cell and prepare its scale-up.

As for WP4, HySyTech (HST) has the task of defining the overall specifications and designing and implementing the prototype electrolyzer – as well as being in charge of demonstrating the PV-LE coupling. As part of this work package, IREC is in charge of creating a simple simulation model for the computation and fluid dynamics modelling to understand the fluid dynamics of the system, porosity, etc. So far, the simulations carried out by IREC have been useful for prototype development.

Dehydrogenation and electricity generation using rGO-H

Carles Ros explained the various spectroscopic techniques implemented to characterize the Dehydrogenation process from rGO-H. Thermal tratments have been used to determine different binding energies of H to rGO, and LASER setup has been set up to address light-stimulated desorption. He emphasized that the next step being implemented is catalyst incorporation, to try to reduce the potential barrier to dehydrogenation.

As for the computational approach, Valentina Tozzini from CNR explained the computationally obtained transition states of Hydrogen, understanding the binding energy of H and trying to systematically characterize the transition states of H of the different reactions and its dependence on the rGO structural features. Her colleague, Francesco Delfino, also explained how the computational methods show the conversion of graphene to rGO by looking at the binding of O and -OH molecules and how they achieved thermal reduction with different temperatures.

Finally, Nino Borchtchoukova from Gencell gave an overview of WP6, electricity generation using rGO-H as fuel, and how they will use the AFC technology to assemble a half cell test bench and use this cell to actually extract H2 from rGO-H.

As indicated above, once scientific presentations were imparted, the consortium held an open discussion to establish the different options and alternatives that could bring solutions to the different problems and challenges several work packages were facing. In all, a full day of very interesting and fruitful discussions prompted new paths for the project.

Related