Catalytic cleaning process for high pressure electrolyzers

"The on growing global energy demand and the increasing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid the worst case scenarios of global warming, forces to introduce cleaner and more sustainable technologies and practices into all sector of the economy. Therefore, electricity produced by renewable sources is continuously increasing in the energy matrix worldwide. One drawback of the renewable energies is the generation intermittency. This issue positions hydrogen as one of the main characters to store the surplus energy and blend the uctuations by producing and storing it at high pressure. Hydrogen can be produced by splitting water using an electrolyzer. Moreover, in order to increase the power-to-gas eficiency, high pressure electrolyzer are being developed. Gas cross contamination in high pressure electrolyzers is a burden that needs to be tackled in Gas order to avoid unwanted ignition events. Therefore, a cleaning process needs to be implemented. In this master thesis a catalytic cleaning process is tested with an existent experimental set up. Tests are performed with pressures up to 90 bar and the behavior of the catalytic material is assessed. Results show v 10% efciency increase with pressure increase along the pressure range tested. It is found that pressure range is bounded due to experimental set-up limitations and modifications to the test facility are proposed." Tesis Energía y Ambiente (maestría) - Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Karlsruhe, 2017