Draft2:Electrocatalysis Consortium
The Electrocatalysis Consortium (ElectroCat) is aimed at increasing U.S. competitiveness in manufacturing fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and other fuel cell energy conversion devices by addressing the primary challenges to the widespread implementation of this technology. The precious metal electrocatalysts that are the current standard in fuel cell systems are expensive and restrict the ability to develop fuel cells that are cost-competitive with traditional hydrocarbon-based power sources. In this sense, catalyst design represents the most pressing material barrier related to fuel cell deployment.
Established as part of the Energy Materials Network, under the Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative, the mission of the ElectroCat Consortium is to create an enduring national laboratory-based network, enabling industry to utilize the national labs’ unique capabilities related to PGM-free electrocatalysts.
DOE's role
ElectroCat is funded by the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Mission
ElectroCat is addressing this barrier by accelerating the development and deployment of platinum group metal-free (PGM-free) electrocatalysts in fuel cells. To do this, the Consortium is employing a systematic approach in which potential catalysts are synthesized and analyzed rapidly and comprehensively using high-throughput, combinatorial methods. These in turn are guided by computational work and the fundamental electrocatalysis and materials knowledge housed across the national laboratory network. Streamlined data sharing with industry and academia partners is critical to the ElectroCat approach, rapidly building an understanding of PGM-free electrocatalysts across the field and ultimately, enabling the incorporation of those materials into next-generation fuel cells.
Organization
Leadership
The ElectroCat leadership consists of a laboratory team with consortium co-leaders from Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories, with oversight from a management team at the U.S. Department of Energy; together with Steering Committee partners from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
DOE Representatives
Steering Committee Role
The ElectroCat Steering Committee identifies and incorporates unique and relevant national laboratory capabilities into the Consortium, develops a coordination service to facilitate and streamline industry access to the Consortium, and oversees the management of the data that results from ElectroCat and collaborators.
Components
- ElectroCat Portal
- ElectroCat Data Hub
- ElectroCat Acceleration Engine
Data Hub
The Data Hub[1] includes:
- “the Data Hub … will house data generated through use of ElectroCat facilities to make it publicly available” “also develop protocols that researchers must follow when submitting data to the Hub (data formats and information on test conditions…)
- “[it] will provide centralized data/model storage capability for various ElectroCat generated information …: 1) Codes/models; 2) Experimental/simulated data; and,
- Journal publications/presentations tagged with the appropriate provenance”
- … provide keyword-based searching capability and publish curated metadata to commercial search engines
- .… virtual linkages to other relevant materials databases a security system with flexibility to accommodate access and use by different classes of projects and data – from highly sensitive proprietary, to embargoed, to publicly available data