Title

Energy Saving Water Electrolysis For Solar H 2 Production

Abstract

There are basically three processes (thermolysis, photocatalysis and electrolysis) that can be used for solar hydrogen production via water splitting. A long standing challenge for solar hydrogen production has been to increase the energy efficiency and reduce the cost. Electricity generated from photovoltaic (PV) cells to electrolyze water for hydrogen production has been implemented and widely used for decades. The advantages of this process are simplicity and maturity of both PV cells and electrolyzer designs and configurations. In this technology there are fundamentally three approaches to increase solar to hydrogen efficiency: (1) increase the conversion efficiency for solar to electrical energy via PV cells; (2) increase the efficiency of water electrolytic cells and (3) reduce the requirement for electrical energy by using high temperature solar thermal energy to reduce the need for Gibbs free energy of water splitting. It is noted that current PV cell efficiency is limited to 10 to 15%. Therefore the efficiency improvement must focus on electrolyzer configurations and, alternatively, on using thermochemical water splitting cycles to reduce the potential requirement for hydrogen production. Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) based water electrolyzers are more compact and have shown higher efficiency than that of conventional alkaline solution based electrolyzers. Energy efficiency of PEM water electrolyzer depends on many factors such as cell configurations and electro catalysts as well as current collectors. We have found that current conductors in a PEM electrolyzer cell play an important role in the enhancement of cell current density. This paper addresses some approaches to achieving higher solar to hydrogen efficiencies via water splitting, focusing on investigation of effects of current collectors as well as electrolysis using pulsating potential technology. Copyright © (2011) by the American Solar Energy Society.

Publication Date

12-1-2011

Publication Title

40th ASES National Solar Conference 2011, SOLAR 2011

Volume

1

Number of Pages

63-70

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

Socpus ID

84866972375 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84866972375

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