Hydrogen Economy and Fuel Cell Technology: A South African Context

Introduction

Access to clean energy has become one the most important global needs that have to be addressed with urgency due to the prevalent climate issues. As a rehabilitation effort, many governmental laws have been set in place to drive the economy towards clean energy sources (Gallagher, 2014; Gerrard, 2011; Martin & Rice, 2014; Mormann, 2015; Msimanga & Sebitosi, 2014; Sovacool, 2021; Winkler, 2005). Hydrogen, a clean source of energy with energy twice as much as traditional sources, has garnered a lot of attention for application in both stationary and mobile application (Hwang & Varma, 2014; Ngqalakwezi et al., 2020; Schlapbach & Züttel, 2001). As such, the hydrogen economy has been established in most countries globally and with Southern Africa being no exception. Since this establishment the political and environmental momentum for advanced hydrogen energy research and market has grown tremendously.

Hydrogen roadmaps have been drafted and hydrogen strategies have been set in place as initial step towards developing hydrogen economy, deploying hydrogen energy systems and technologies in South Africa (Pollet et al., 2015; Santhanam et al., 2017). Under the Paris climate agreement, South Africa has progressed in trying to establish a green economy and meeting emission targets for current technology. The establishment of the Hydrogen South Africa (HySA) program by the Department of Science and Technology was one the key steps taken to grow the scale of research, innovation and the development hydrogen technology in SA (Barrett, 2014; Pollet et al., 2014a). The key mandate of the program being to attain goals of the national and global strategy towards a greener environment. Under the program, three centers of competency were established with three primary focus areas HySA catalysis, HySA infrastructure and HySA systems. Mintek, a metals and mining consulting company in SA, co-hosts the HySA catalysis R&D with the University of Cape Town. HySA infrastructure and HySA systems are hosted the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), North West University and the University of the Western Cape (Barrett, 2014).

The primary aim and focus of this research and of the centers is to beneficiate the natural resources available, moving from merely manufacturing platinum ores and processed metals to producing fuel cell catalyst and components in large scale (Barrett, 2014; Pollet et al., 2015). This is a deliberate strategy that is promoting the use of our local resources to grow our research capacity while also creating knowledge and expanding the human resource capacity (Bessarabov et al., 2017; Irena, 2011; Santhanam et al., 2017; Technology, 2007). The initial goal/mandate of the program was, a). To create a base for hydrogen processes, storage technologies and hydrogen production, b). Using our PGM resources, establish a base for creating Pt/PGM based electrocatalyst for fuel cells and c). Address local developmental challenges through developing fuel cell technology and building on the already existing global knowledge (Pollet et al., 2015).

A lot of these goals have been achieved with the program being extended for the next 10 coming years. In this chapter, a background in fuel cells and fuel cell technology is discussed, the impact and progress the centers have made on a global scale, and the progress the HySA organisation has made and prototypes it has developed thus far are also discussed.