Comparative study of alkaline water electrolysis, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis and solid oxide electrolysis through multiphysics modeling

This paper provides a comparative study of alkaline water electrolysis (AE), proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEM) and solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOEC) through multiphysics modeling. A unified multi physics model for the three types of electrolyzers, considering current density distribution, single-phase and diphasic flow, mass transfer and temperature dependence in the electrolyzers, is derived to make a thorough interpretation of their differences in terms of I-V characteristics, cell efficiency and part-load performances. Besides, various definitions of electrolysis efficiency from different researches on PtH are compared and evaluated from thermodynamics to unify the definitions of efficiency. Main drawbacks of the cell performances are then reviewed respectively to explain the parametric gap among three types of water electrolysis.

Automated summary

This paper provides a comparative study of alkaline water electrolysis, proton exchange membrane water electrolysis and solid oxide electrolysis cells through multiphysics modeling. It analyzes their differences in various aspects and explains the reasons behind these differences.