Assessment of a NaOH-based alkaline electrolyser’s performance: System modelling and operating parameters optimisation

Most of the scientific research is focused on KOH-based alkaline electrolysers, while NaOH-based ones are unexplored although they present interesting features. This paper presents a semi-empirical model developed in the Python environment to predict a NaOH-based alkaline electrolyser’s performance to cover such a research gap and perform an optimisation procedure of electrochemical parameters. A sensitivity analysis has been carried out to study how its performance changes while varying the: i) NaOH content, ii) pressure, and iii) both. Separately, the best result has been obtained with a NaOH content and an operating pressure of 8% and 6.5 bar, respectively. Furthermore, the same values have been recorded even by varying both the NaOH content and the operating pressure. Specifically, a maximum average efficiency increase of 3.57% at 35 ◦C, 0.17% at 40 ◦C, and 3.74% at 35 ◦C in the case of NaOH content, pressure, and both, respectively.