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2023
Conference Paper
Title
How efficient can hydrogen be? Hydrogen technologies and their limits of optimizibility
Abstract
Hydrogen offers excellent potential for cross-sector decarbonization through power-to-gas technologies necessary for climate policy. However, studies show that the planned expansion of electrolysis technologies according to current future scenarios will not produce sufficient quantities of hydrogen. One way to address this challenge is to optimize electrolysis technologies, which would increase efficiency and, at the same time, increase hydrogen yield. This approach raises the question of the limit of optimizability. This paper presents and discusses a model to represent an idealized reference process for water electrolysis. The reference model has the potential of identifying the optimum based on applicable laws of nature and the current state of the art, which can be used as a basis for the process design of an electrolysis cell. Furthermore, it allows the real-time evaluation of the operation of an electrolysis cell and, thus, the investigation of degradation effects.
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