Evaluation of performance of an innovative PEM electrolyser stack:

The proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE) represents a pioneering technology in the field of green hydrogen production. In light of the environmental issues associated with climate change, the reduction of CO₂ emissions has become a matter of increasing relevance, with investments in technology growing on a daily basis. The case study presented in the report is a stack water electrolyzer belonging to the company 1S1 Energy and appears to be highly promising as a high-performance technology. All analyses of the stack were conducted at CO2 circle lab, located at the Environment park in Turin, using a homemade test bench, and they will be presented following a general description of PEMWE. The objective of this report is to develop a model to define the performance (polarization curve) of the high performance stack. The theoretical polarization curve was obtained applying a computation model which describe the overvoltages, the results were plotted in MatLab. Unfortunately, following the tests (leakage test, thermal test, conditioning), issues related to the prototype emerged: design and assembly errors drastically reduced the stack's performance, eventually leading to its damage. As a result, the stack was disassembled for membrane replacement and a static analysis was conducted to understand the level of stress experienced by the various layers. The static simulation was done using Ansys on the 3D model of the stack built with solidworks.