Advanced Electrolysers for Hydrogen Production with Renewable Energy Sources

摘要

The 3-year FCH project ADEL (ADvanced ELectrolyser for Hydrogen Production with Renewable Energy Sources) targets the development of cost-competitive, high energy efficient and sustainable hydrogen production based on renewable energy sources. A particular emphasis is given to the coupling flexibility with various available heat sources, allowing addressing both centralized and de-centralized hydrogen production market. The ADEL 3-year-project target is to develop a new steam electrolyser concept, the Intermediate Temperature Steam Electrolysis (ITSE) aiming at optimizing the electrolyser life time by decreasing its operating temperature while maintaining satisfactory performance level and high energy efficiency at the level of the complete system composed by the heat and power source and the electrolyser unit. The project is built on a two scales parallel approach: - At the stack level, the adaptation and improvement of current most innovative cells, interconnect/coating and sealing components for ITSE operation conditions aims at increasing the electrolyser lifetime by decreasing its degradation rate - At the system level, to facilitate an exhaustive and quantified analysis of the integration of this "new generation ITSE" with different heat and power sources like wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear, flow sheets will be produced with adjustable parameters. For selected cases, in depth energy efficiency evaluation will be done based on obtained stack data at intermediate temperature, and on comprehensive description of energy sources. The paper presents the project approach and the initial efforts of the project started in January 2011.