Green Hydrogen Research Laboratory
It is said that to create a sustainable society, we must reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions by 80% and zero of substantial CO2 emission is Japanese target up to 2050. Just about 90% of the primary energy consumption in Japan is fossil energy, over half of which results in CO2 emissions without being converted into electricity along the way. Furthermore, our supplies of power from solar and wind power generation do not optimally fit our energy demand, either temporally or spatially, which has become a major problem for the operations of our power grids.
To address this problem, we hope to be able to employ electrolytic technologies, the best known among them being hydrolysis, which will serve to absorb the fluctuations in renewable power, while creating energetic and usable materials such as hydrogen, which will serve to convert non-electric applications into renewable electric ones. To do so, it is essential that we have the fuel cell technologies needed to take the energetic materials produced such as hydrogen and apply them efficiently to the field of transportation, notably automobiles, which are typical applications of non-electric applications at present.
The Green Hydrogen Research Laboratory works as part of industry-university-government consortiums to develop materials, to develop and standardize methods for material evaluation, and to research and develop electrochemical application systems that bring these aspects together, particularly those involving alkaline water electrolysis, hydrolysis with solid polymer electrolytes, electrolytic hydrogenation of energy carriers (toluene), electrolytic synthesis of usable materials, solid polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC), and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC).
