Evolutionary Design Optimization of an Alkaline Water Electrolysis Cell for Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen is an excellent energy source for long-term storage and free of greenhouse gases. However, its high production cost remains an obstacle to its advancement. The two main parameters contributing to the high cost include the cost of electricity and the cost of initial financial investment. It is possible to reduce the latter by the optimization of system design and operation conditions, allowing the reduction of the cell voltage. Because the CAPEX (initial cost divided by total hydrogen production of the electrolyzer) decreases according to current density but the OPEX (operating cost depending on the cell voltage) increases depending on the current density, there exists an optimal cu…
Eulerian two-fluid model of alkaline water electrolysis for hydrogen production
Hydrogen storage is a promising technology for storage of renewable energy resources. Despite its high energy density potential, the development of hydrogen storage has been impeded, mainly due to its significant cost. Although its cost is governed mainly by electrical energy expense, especially for hydrogen produced with alkaline water electrolysis, it is also driven by the value of the cell tension. The most common means of electrolyzer improvement is the use of an electrocatalyst, which reduces the energy required for electrochemical reaction to take place. Another efficient means of electrolyzer improvement is to use the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-assisted design that allows the…
Suitability of the VOF Approach to Model an Electrogenerated Bubble with Marangoni Micro-Convection Flow
When a hydrogen or oxygen bubble is created on the surface of an electrode, a micro-convective vortex flow due to the Marangoni effect is generated at the bottom of the bubble in contact with the electrode. In order to study such a phenomenon numerically, it is necessary to be able to simulate the surface tension variations along with a liquid-gas interface, to integrate the mass transfer across the interface from the dissolved species present in the electrolyte to the gas phase, and to take into account the moving contact line. Eulerian methods seem to have the potential to solve this modeling. However, the use of the continuous surface force (CSF) model in the volume of fluid (VOF) framew…