Thermodynamical and Electrical Model of a PEM Electrolyzer Plant in the Megawatt Range

During the next years, proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers with a capacity of several 100MW each, shall be built in the European Union. Currently, there are hardly any corresponding system models in the literature that can be used for simulating PEM electrolysis plants of this size. In particular, the generation of heat as a hydrogen by-product during electrolysis is commonly not considered. However, waste heat from larger plants can potentially be used for district heating. In this paper, a first approach of a detailed system model of a PEM electrolysis plant in the megawatt range is developed. The model parameters are based on values from the literature. This paper shows that the values for the exchange current density from the literature vary in a range of 10^9 , resulting in a large impact on the polarization curve. The result is a detailed PEM electrolyzer plant model, which is adapted to the Siemens Silyzer 300.