Experimental studies and modeling of advanced alkaline water electrolyser with porous nickel electrodes for hydrogen production

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.03.154
• Publication Date: 2017-04-13T00:31:44Z
• Authors: K.C. Sandeep; Sachin Kamath; Krunal Mistry; Ashok Kumar M; S.K. Bhattacharya; Kalyan Bhanja; Sadhana Mohan
• Keywords: 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Abstract The commercial hydrogen production by water electrolysis is limited by the high cost of electricity. The production cost can be minimized, if the cell module is operated with the minimum voltage at maximum current density. In the present study, porous nickel electrodes were developed indigenously on an engineering scale and used in an advanced zero gap filter press type bipolar electrolyser to minimize the cell voltage. As the cell voltage–current density characteristic of the cell module is unique feature of its design and the operating parameters, the polarization experiments were carried out using this cell module and the cell voltage–current density characteristics were generated at different operating temperatures. Further, the system is modelled for its electrochemical performance and the parameters accounting for different losses such as Ohmic and activation over potential, were estimated at different temperatures. These different parameters were compared with the data existing in literature and based on the analysis, the present cell module is found to be superior to the existing commercial electrolyzers in terms of energy efficiency.