Dynamic energy and mass balance model for an industrial alkaline water electrolyzer plant process

This paper proposes a parameter adjustable dynamic mass and energy balance simulation model for an industrial alkaline water electrolyzer plant that enables cost and energy ef-ficiency optimization by means of system dimensioning and control. Thus, the simulation model is based on mathematical models and white box coding, and it uses a practicable number of fixed parameters. Zero-dimensional energy and mass balances of each unit operation of a 3 MW, and 16 bar plant process were solved in MATLAB functions connected via a Simulink environment. Verification of the model was accomplished using an analo-gous industrial plant of the same power and pressure range having the same operational systems design. The electrochemical, mass flow and thermal behavior of the simulation and the industrial plant were compared to ascertain the accuracy of the model and to enable modification and detailed representation of real case scenarios so that the model is suitable for use in future plant optimization studies. The thermal model dynamically predicted the real case with 98.7 % accuracy. Shunt currents were the main contributor to relative low Faraday efficiency of 86 % at nominal load and steady-state operation and heat loss to ambient from stack was only 2.6 % of the total power loss. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper proposes a parameter adjustable dynamic mass and energy balance simulation model for an industrial alkaline water electrolyzer plant. The model enables cost and energy efficiency optimization and is based on mathematical models and white box coding. The accuracy of the model was verified using an analogous industrial plant, and it was found to be suitable for use in future plant optimization studies.