Electrochemical devices: the status of research at CNR-ITAE

Electrochemical devices may potentially solve several issues in various sectors such as production of energy (a combination of thermal and electrical energy), storage (supercapacitors and batteries), and production of fuels from wastes. In the meantime, these technologies have an important role in the commitment of the European Union to transform transport and energy systems as part of a low carbon economy following the Strategic Energy Technologies Plan (SET-Plan). In this scenario, the electrochemical devices offer significant opportunities in increasing efficiency, flexibility and integration due to their specific and intrinsically properties. At the present, there is a significant gap between electrochemical technologies operating at low temperatures (from room temperature to 200 °C) and high temperatures (from 700 °C to 1000 °C). These two groups of technologies are sensibly different one to each other. The relevant characteristics are the high costs of materials for low temperature technologies and high cost for the manufacture and maintenance for high temperature technologies. Another difference concerns with the large sensibility to the poisoning for the low temperatures technologies and the poor flexibility in terms of operation for the high temperatures technologies. These are only few examples of what breakthrough is required. Therefore, the key aspect in this roadmap is the development of new materials. The CNR-ITAE has a long and proven experience in electrochemical devices having contributed to the penetration of these technologies into Europe since the early 1980's. In this seminary will be reported the most recent achievements at CNR-ITAE concerning the low and high temperatures electrochemical cells, including, solid oxide fuel cells, solid oxide electrolyser, solid oxide batteries, polymer electrolyte based fuel cells and electrolyser, polymer membrane based supercapacitors and will be suggested novel approaches in order to mitigate the most common problems affecting these technologies.