The electrolytic formation of hydrogen from water is a means of converting renewable electricity into chemical fuels, but the hydrogen produced at the cathode remains too expensive to be competitive with other energy storage technologies. The cost of hydrogen is driven up even further when factoring in storage and handling. This scenario provides the imperative to find other ways to utilize hydrogen generated at a cathode. This presentation will lay out the potential for utilizing a palladium membrane reactor to drive hydrogenation in a chemical reactor physically linked to an adjacent electrochemical cell that generates the hydrogen. This configuration can provide high effective hydrogen pressures at modest potentials without the need for pressurized hydrogen gas. The reactor’s key feature is the palladium that serves as both the cathode and a hydrogen-permeable membrane. The palladium membrane decouples proton reduction from hydrogenation, enabling the separation of chemistry from electrochemistry.

Hydrogen without H<sub>2</sub>

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Hydrogen without H2

Hydrogen without H₂