FY18-C1 GRC: H2O Electrolysis with Impure Water Source

Water electrolysis is a key chemical process for NASA that has application for in situ resource utilization, life support, and energy storage. In each of these applications there is a water process stream that typically is contaminated, and before the water can be electrolyzed, the contaminants must be removed to produce a highly purified water source. It would be highly advantageous if a capability to produce a water electrolyzer that substantially reduced or even eliminated the need for such extreme purification. H2O electrolyzers have required ultra-pure water be used to prevent contamination and degradation of the electrolysis electrodes. This is because the water is typically flows directly over the electrode wetting the electrode catalyst. Impurities within the water, particularly charged ions, bind to the catalyst and to the ion exchange membrane sites, rendering the cell useless. The water electrolysis cells are ultra-sensitive to this contamination, and therefore require ultra-high purity water at all times. None of the water sources NASA is expecting to harvest or recover as part of its exploration efforts, meet this high purity, and therefore additional water purification is required. This sensitivity requires the upstream water processing system to clean the water. The goal of this research and development effort would be to design and build a water electrolyzer that can directly use contaminated water.

NASA could substantially benefit from a water electrolyzer technology that can generate H2/O2 without requiring water purification. NASA can expect highly contaminated water from spacecraft water sources (condensate, wash water and waste water) as well as water obtained from processing Lunar/Martian water sources. The near-term benefit would be the ability to use impure Life Support and ISRU water product thereby eliminating water purification subsystems. This would also potentially reduce the hydrogen cost from commercial electrolysis. The far-term benefit would be the use of this technology to produce pure hydrogen and oxygen from water produced on the Moon or Mars from ice mining or from regolith oxide reduction. Also large scale commercial electrolytic hydrogen production could be done at reduced cost if the water did not require extreme purification.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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