(516d) Modeling and Analysis of Alkaline Electrolyzer Systems for Hydrogen Production

Hydrogen energy is recently gaining more attention as it is considered one of the realistic options for minimizing environmental pollution associated with the use of fossil fuels. One of the sustainable routes for the production of hydrogen using non-fossil fuels is water electrolsis, which can produce high purity hydrogen without significant costs for environmental pollution.

Alkaline electrolysis is the most common method for water electrolysis which uses an alkaline solution as the electrolyte to promote the flow of electricity and separate the produced gas through a diaphragm. It can be thought as in the commercialization stage due to high energy efficiency and low installation cost. One of the main difficulties in implementing water electrolysis is the large power consumption required for electrolysis. Therefore, it is important to have a good understanding about the process characteristics of alkaline electrolysis, which can easily develop design guidelines to improve energy efficiency. In this study, mathematical modeling of the alkaline electrolytic cell system is established and key design variables affecting the electrolytic cell performance are analyzed. The operating characteristics of the alkaline electrolyzer system are analyzed and the hydrogen production capacity for operating conditions is predicted by the model developed in this study.

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. 2019R1A2C2002263).