Plenary speaker

Biography

Prof. Dato’ Ir. Dr. Wan Ramli Wan Daud FASc is presently the UKM-Petronas Professor of Sustainable Hydrogen Energy at the Fuel Cell Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (December 2019- 2021), was Professor of Chemical Engineering at Department of Chemical & Process Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (1996-2021) and Principal Research Fellow at the Fuel Cell Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (2007-2021). He was born on 27 December 1955 in Bukit Mertajam, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. He went to school at Sekolah Kebangsaan Jalan Conolly, Ipoh (1962-1964), Sekolah Kebangsaan Taiping (1965-1967), Sekolah Dato’ Abdul Razak, Tanjong Malim and Seremban (1968-1973) and Leederville Technical College, Perth, Western Australia (1974). He obtained the BEng degree (First Class Hon.) in chemical engineering from the University of Monash, Victoria, Australia in 1978 and the PhD degree in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1984. He is the Founding Director of the Fuel Cell Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (2007-2013) and the Founding President of the Malaysian Association of Hydrogen Energy (MAHE) (2018-2021). He was elected Fellow of Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2007 and was Chairman of its Malaysia branch in 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Science Malaysia, Malaysia’s institution for top scientists, in 2012 for his World leading role in scientific work on hydrogen energy and fuel cells. He won the prestigious Merdeka Award 2016 for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement, Malaysia’s top award for Malaysian scientists, on 23 September 2016 for outstanding scholarly research and development work in advancing the technology of fuel cells and hydrogen energy in Malaysia, the region, and the World. He also won the Anugerah Tokoh Akademik Bahasa Melayu 2020, Malaysia’s top Bahasa Melayu award for advancing the use of Bahasa Melayu in teaching and research in engineering at public universities in Malaysia. He was listed as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds in the top 1% of World scientists and Highly Cited Researcher in engineering six times in 2015 and 2016 by Thomson Reuters, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 by Clarivate Analytics for the highest number of highly cited papers. He promoted the Hydrogen Economy by spearheading the development of the first Malaysian Roadmap for Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cells in 2006. He updated the hydrogen and fuel cells Roadmap in the Blueprint of Fuel Cells Industry in Malaysia published by Academy of Science Malaysia in 2017. He also wrote a position paper on the Hydrogen Economy in Malaysia for the Academy to be presented to the Malaysian Government in 2020. His main research areas are green hydrogen energy such as photoelectrochemical (PEC), electrolytic and microbial electrolytic water splitting; fuel cells technology such as proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), microbial fuel cells (MFC) and direct fuel cells (DFC); and sustainable industrial drying technology such as solar, spray, drum, and fluidized bed dryers. He published 411 articles in international journals, 401 articles in proceedings of international conferences and 235 articles in proceedings of national conferences. He is cited in WOS 10,442 times with H-index 54; in SCOPUS 10,823 times with H-index 54, and in Google Scholar 17,276 times with H-index 67. He was invited to present 42 keynote and 10 invited papers on hydrogen energy and fuel cells in China, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand.

Speech details

GREEN HYDROGEN FROM PEM AND AEM ELECTROLYZERS: CHALLENGES OF COMMERCIALIZATION

Hydrogen is identified as the new energy carrier that would be a game changer in solving both the climate change crisis caused by greenhouse gases/carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and energy security crisis caused by uncertainty of supply of fossil fuel due to depleting reserves and political instabilities in supplying countries. Hydrogen energy is attractive because it could be used in a wide range of applications as clean fuel for transportation, heat and power generation; as energy storage and feedstock in chemical industries. Hydrogen economy is the circular economy where green hydrogen is produced from renewable energy, is used in various applications to produce water that is recycled for hydrogen production. Currently most of the World’s grey hydrogen is produced cheaply from steam methane reforming (SMR) that also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide to .the atmosphere. Even if the carbon dioxide could be separated and stored in suitable geological formations and in old oil wells, or converted into useful products that could be sold, the blue hydrogen produced would still suffer from security of supply of the raw material, methane from natural gas. In the last few years, there was renewed interest in green hydrogen production technology especially in water splitting electrolysis technology that is coupled with renewable energy via power to gas (PtG) process. Although water electrolysis becomes more attractive in PtG for green hydrogen production when renewable energy cost goes down due to improvement in energy efficiency and lower manufacturing cost of photovoltaic cells, the costs of green hydrogen is still 2-3 times more expensive than blue hydrogen produced from SMR. Electrolyzer market demand will grow to 25 GW by 2030 when cost of hydrogen is $2.0/kg from the present baseline cost of $4.0/kg. Although alkaline water electrolyzers (AWE) are already available commercially for many years, new water electrolysis technologies such as the proton exchange membrane (PEMWE) and the anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWE) are developed because both have smaller footprints, higher current densities and higher output pressures than AWE. Since AEMWE use Ni alloys instead of Pt group catalysts compared to PEMWE, its cost is 25% less than PEMEL and 20% less than AWE. Main costs in AEMWE stack is in MEA (25%) consisting of Ni alloys catalysts and anion exchange membranes and bipolar plate (45%) comprising of Ni foam and stainless steel. Main costs in AEMWE stack is in membrane electrode assembly (MEA) (41%) consisting of Pt and Ru catalysts and proton exchange membranes; and bipolar plate (53%) comprising of coated stainless steel. The stack takes up 55% of the cost of both AEMWE and PEMWE systems while BOP takes the rest. Costs of hydrogen could be reduced marginally by $0.45 – 0.50 by reducing catalyst and BOP costs. Local sources of catalysts could bring the input cost of catalyst down. Cost of hydrogen could be reduced further by $1.50/kg if renewable energy electricity tariff is drastically reduced.