Mass transfer in water electrolysis

Hydrogen made from green electricity is a promising energy carrier. This project is an extension of a project started in 2018: Alkaliflex. Alkaliflex aims to map out the flexibility and productivity of existing alkaline water electrolysis and to come up with proposals for improvement. This improvement is necessary to make the costs of green hydrogen production (currently about 3 euro/kg) competitive with those of the grey alternative (steam reforming, about 1.5 euro/kg). At Alkaliflex, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of dust transfer in different parts of the industrial process will be performed. A very important part of these simulations is the modelling of the formation of hydrogen bubbles at the electrodes. The modelling of this component is far from trivial and it is expected that the outcome of the CFD simulations in Alkaliflex will depend on the choice of the CFD method and/or the CFD package. A goal of this parallel proposal is to compare different CFD methods and packages with regard to hydrogen transfer from the electrode to the bubbles in order to obtain a better scientific basis for the simulations that will be performed in Alkaliflex.
People involved in this project: Niels Deen & Ahad Zarghami