Diseño y Construcción de un Banco de Pruebas para el Estudio de la Producción de Hidrogeno por Medio de Electrólisis Utilizando Electrolizadores Sin Membranas

Abstract

The storage of electrical energy in the form of hydrogen can be done through water electrolysis, which consists of passing an electric current through water, causing the dissociation of the hydrogen and oxygen molecules that make up the water. Currently, there are two commercial methods for producing hydrogen via electrolysis: alkaline electrolysis and PEM electrolysis (proton exchange membrane). Alkaline electrolysis is the most advanced technology, using catalysts based on Ni, Co, Ru, and a liquid electrolyte, usually potassium hydroxide in an aqueous solution. The costs of this system are relatively low, making it the most widely used technology in recent decades (Jul et al., 2018). PEM electrolysis uses a proton exchange membrane, which, among other things, acts as a gas separator. Some of the strengths of PEM electrolysis are the high quality of the produced gas, low maintenance, and operation without chemicals (Diaz Saenz, 2020); however, its cost is high.

An alternative to alkaline and PEM electrolysis is membrane-less electrolyzers. These require only three parts to function: an anode, a cathode, and a structure that facilitates fluid transport along with product collection (Davis, 2019). In recent years, interest in them has grown because they reduce production costs by not requiring expensive membranes. Their operation is based on fluid mechanics, a field that the mechanical engineering faculty of the Santo Tomás University is interested in, but the issue is that there is currently no setup in place to collect data and advance the study of the phenomenon. This would ultimately help in the future to design membrane-less electrolyzers.

For these reasons, the purpose of this project is to design and build a testing bench for membrane-less electrolyzers, where the effect of various operational parameters such as flow rate, amperage, voltage, etc., on the production rate and purity of the hydrogen obtained can be studied.