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High temperature water splitting using protonic ceramic electrolysis cells: multiscale design analysis from cells to systems
Thatte, Amogh A.
Thatte, Amogh A.
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2020
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2021-06-04
Abstract
Hydrogen continues to emerge as an attractive energy carrier due to its flexibility to serve multiple energy end-use applications across numerous markets within the transportation, industrial, commercial and residential energy sectors. This research seeks to link the benefits of intermediate temperature protonic ceramics with the inherent efficiency advantages of high temperature water splitting (HTWS) for hydrogen production. Advancing protonic ceramic electrochemical cell (PCEC) technology offer promise for a host of energy conversion applications, including novel membrane reactors, electrochemical compression, power generation from fuel cells and hydrogen production via electrolysis. Predicting PCEC performance through modeling and simulation is crucial to understanding the potential technical and economic benefits of this emerging technology. However, flexible and effective modeling of PCECs is challenged by the need to properly capture the numerous physicochemical phenomena occurring in order to adequately predict the operating characteristics of such cells. This work primarily focuses on the development of framework for a computationally efficient, high fidelity (1+1D), steady-state, cell-level, interface charge transfer model that couples conservation equations with the Nernst-Planck formulation. The model is formulated in such a way that reduces empiricisms, allows for easy integration of modeling parameters extracted from button cell experiments, and enables rapid performance scale-up to cell and stack-level predictions. In addition to capturing the distribution of properties within a cell, a utility-scale PCEC system is designed to supply 50 tons of compressed dry hydrogen (99.9%, 20 bar, 10C) per day. Performance of the PCEC system is analyzed for different feedstock steam concentrations, supply temperatures, design cell voltages, and steam utilizations. Overall, hydrogen production via PCEC can operate with efficiencies near 70% and at a production cost of $3.7 per kg of hydrogen.
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