Efficiency of Electrolytic Cell Operation in Green Hydrogen Production

Next-Generation Hydrogen Production Process Attracting Attention for Carbon Neutrality

Steam reforming is widely used in the industrial hydrogen production currently. Steam reforming can produce a large amount of hydrogen efficiently and at low cost, but it uses fossil fuels as raw materials and fuel, resulting in CO₂ emissions.

Recently, green hydrogen production through electrolysis of water using renewable energy has attracted attention as a next-generation process supporting carbon neutrality.

This hydrogen production process consists of multiple pieces of equipment, the core of which is an electrolyzer.

 

How an Electrolytic Cell Produces Green Hydrogen

Several water electrolysis technologies are used in electrolytic cells. Typical methods include alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) and proton exchange membrane (PEM). In each of these methods, an electric current is applied to a cell to cause an electrolytic reaction and generate hydrogen gas.

The cell consists of an electrode (anode and cathode), a membrane, a bipolar plate and a separator. Electrolytic solution is applied to the cell and an electric current is applied to the electrode to perform electrolysis.

In an electrolytic cell, multiple layers of these cells are stacked and an electric current is applied to efficiently produce a large amount of hydrogen.

 

Maximizing Hydrogen Production and Reducing Power Consumption

SMARTDAC+ Improves Electrolytic Cell Efficiency by Cell Voltage Measurement (CVM)

Hydrogen production by electrolysis uses a large amount of electricity, and electricity costs account for the majority of operating costs. Therefore, reducing power consumption is an extremely important issue. In order to reduce power consumption while producing hydrogen efficiently, it is necessary to maximize the cells’ power efficiency. Therefore, it is essential to appropriately manage the power supply to the cells and maintain them regularly. One such method is cell voltage monitoring (hereinafter, CVM). Understanding the state of the cells based on their voltage trends is useful for efficient operation and preventing trouble.

The SMARTDAC+ series Data Acquisition System GM and the DataLogging Software GA10 provide the optimal system for CVM. The GM is a versatile, scalable, and maintainable data logger with a block structure that allows you to easily combine the necessary modules. GA10 is a PC-based data acquisition program that makes it easy to monitor and process collected data. It effectively manages data by processing only the necessary data and sending it to the higher-level system.

 

Four Features of SMARTDAC+ in CVM Systems

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High-Precision Collection of Electrolytic Cell Voltage

The GM10 accurately collects data from the electrolyzer.

CVM requires multi-channel voltage measurement. By using the GM10 and the GX90EX expansion module, you can simultaneously measure up to 420 channels of cell voltage.

The GM10 accurately records minute changes in cell voltage.
It has a measurement accuracy of ±(0.01% of rdg +2 mV)*. The display resolution of digital data is 100 μV (±2 V range) and 100 mV (±6 V range), making it possible to measure data with high resolution.

* This value is calculated from the accuracy test data at the time of production pickup in the 6 V range.

 

Support for Data Reliability of Electrolyzers

The GM10 improves the reliability of acquisition from electrolyzers.

The GM series has excellent noise resistance and has been used for many years in many production sites. It can stably and accurately collect measurement data even in severe noise environments that handle large currents, such as in electrolyzers. It has been widely adopted in caustic soda factories using electrolyzers.

As a data logger, the GM10 stores data on site. If monitoring on the host system is interrupted due to a network failure or communication error, the GM10 retains the measured data as a file

By using GM10, data reliability cannot be achieved with remote IO.

 

Efficient Monitoring of the Cell Voltage of the Electrolyzer

GA10 allows you to easily and efficiently monitor the cell voltage of your electrolyzer.

GA10 can be connected to up to 100 devices and can handle up to 10,000 tag data points. Monitoring these data devices requires no programming or complicated setup. When a device is connected to GA10, it is automatically detected, and monitoring can be started simply by registering the devices.

 

Converting the Measured Voltage of the Electrolytic Cell into Valuable Data

GA10 can process the voltage data of an electrolytic cell using a calculation function.

The voltage data collected by the GM10 can be used to process the moving average value of any cell, the average voltage of the entire cell stack, and other data that are useful for operating the electrolytic cell. In addition, by processing data and sending it to a higher-level system such as DCS, you can construct an efficient system.

 

Flexible System Configuration with Rich Network Functions

The GM10 and GA10's rich networking capabilities make it easy to share and monitor the GM of your entire system.

The GM10 and GA10 supports various communication protocols. They can communicate with lower-level devices such as controllers like PLC and field devices, as well as higher-level systems such as DCS and SCADA. And it enables the construction of flexible networks.