AREVA's Renewable Power Business Unit offers various sustainable energy solutions such as wind turbines, biomass power plants or fuel cells and electrolyser systems. Within this field HELION is in charge of the development, manufacture and commercialization of fuel cell and electrolyser systems, offering complete solutions for distributed electrical power generation. PEM water electrolyser development started in AREVA in the late eighties focusing on hydrogen production in nuclear power stations for preventing oxygen corrosion by de- oxidation of cooling water with hydrogen. A number of laboratory scale prototype stacks have been built and tested as well as some industrial scale systems which are still in operation. Capitalizing on these applications, HELION develops new high pressure PEM water electrolyser systems, mostly to connect them to renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines or photovoltaics in order to produce hydrogen as energy storage. This hydrogen energy should be converted back into electricity using PEM fuel cells whenever wind turbines or photovoltaics can not satisfy the power demand. So, the energetic chain could be used to sustain or to upgrade the existing electrical grids. In this way high pressure PEM water electrolyser has been designed to meet the needs of these stationary applications. It is now in operation over 2 years at HELION and was rated to produce about 1 to 2 kg hydrogen per day at up to 50 bars. The presentation will be focused on the stack and system development presenting experimental results in operating conditions.
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