Avium, an alkaline electrolysis company supported by Tallgrass, receives a three-year, $5 million award from the Department of Energy (DOE).

The DOE funding will accelerate the commercialization of robust and reliable alkaline electrolyzers by combining Avium’s proven low-cost, high-efficiency catalysts with stacks designed to handle Avium’s higher hydrogen production rates.

Avium’s catalysts and coatings allow alkaline water electrolyzers to outperform other hydrogen production technologies over the long run by regenerating catalysts in the field to maintain high performance over an extended stack lifetime and by enabling direct connection to variable renewable resources. The award will significantly improve the cost-effectiveness of green hydrogen production and will allow alkaline electrolyzers to meet or exceed the DOE performance goal of 2 A/cm2 at ≤1.7 V.

“Most notably, the stacks will incorporate Avium’s patented catalysts and novel deposition methods — boosting efficiency, increasing hydrogen production rates, and extending stack lifetimes while eliminating expensive platinum group metal components,” said PJ Piper, chief executive officer at Avium. 

"Tallgrass has supported Avium for the last two years as the team has scaled up and proven their technology. This groundbreaking technology has the potential to unlock large-scale hydrogen production from renewable energy. The DOE award is an exciting milestone that will help Avium continue its important work in designing an electrolyzer stack that can take full advantage of the underlying technology,” said Justin Campbell, vice president of power and transmission at Tallgrass.

Avium will collaborate with U.S.-based technology leader Teledyne Energy Systems, whose proven TitanTM HMXT Alkaline Water Electrolyzer will be a test bed for this project. Other Avium collaborators on this mission-critical project are the University of Kansas, Dwayne Peaslee Technical Training Center, and Urban TEC.