Pre-design of a hydrogen production system

One of the biggest challenges today is to produce large amounts of energy in a sustainable way, to limit global warming caused largely by primary energy resources consumption such as fossil fuels. In recent years, much focus has been placed on hydrogen: it is an energy carrier that does not exist in nature in elemental form, consequently it must be extracted from other molecules (example: methane, water, hydrocarbons). In this thesis study, carried out at the Enapter company, a pre-design approach for an Anion exchange membrane (AEM) hydrogen production system is carried out. The different components of the electrolyzer are analysed, including both the structural and mechanical part. Furthermore, the energy management is also considered. The objective is to observe the variation of some parameters as the operating conditions change and to find the best solution according to the installation requirements of the product with regard to gravimetric indexes, volumetric indexes and power consumption. This study is therefore divided into several sections, starting with the analysis of an electrolytic model for hydrogen production, the size analysis of the components and the energy analysis of some of these latter. The results obtained were validated and showed that proposed model can be adopted for the pre-design development of an AEM electrolysis system, able to determine the best configuration according to the required operating conditions.