DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE ANION EXCHANGE POLYMER FOR SOLID ELECTROLYTE WATER ELECTROLYSIS

• Main Author: Simanjuntak, Albroston
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/84370
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The achievement of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) has become a hot topic among various sectors in Indonesia, including the government, industry players, and researchers. The reduction of GHG emissions is seen as the solution to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C in accordance with the Paris Agreement. One of the efforts to achieve this goal is by utilizing renewable clean energy sources. The most promising method for producing environmentally friendly energy is by storing energy in the form of chemical compounds, one of which is the technology of water electrolysis that can produce hydrogen gas. Water electrolysis technology has been developed for a long time, starting from alkaline water electrolysis to water electrolysis using proton exchange membrane (PEM). The use of PEM in water electrolysis requires a lot of costs due to the use bipolar plate of noble metal-based electrocatalysts that are rare. To overcome this, the acidic PEM operating conditions are changed to basic, so that anion exchange membrane (AEM) is used as a selective medium. However, this membrane has a weakness in terms of stability in alkaline conditions, so the development of polymer materials for membrane composition remains a challenge to date. This research aims to synthesize a polymer with high alkaline performance and stability as a constituent of anion exchange membranes. Polymer synthesis is carried out using an aromatic backbone monomer due to its good stability in alkaline conditions. The experimental procedure starts with simple synthesis, including polymerization, quaternization, and membrane casting. The experiment is conducted by varying the concentration of aromatic backbone to determine the effect of the backbone group on the performance of the resulting anion exchange membrane. The results of polymer synthesis and quaternization showed that the variation with aromatic compound p-terphenyl:m-terphenyl 50%:50% resulted in relatively high yields of 96.32% and 96.12%, respectively. The AEM obtained showed a high ion conductivity of 59.22 mS/cm and showed relatively high oxidation stability through the Fenton test with a weight loss of 3.45%, swelling ratio of 7.41%, and water uptake of 29.17% at 30°C.