Work

Physics-based Modeling of Degradation in Alkaline Water Electrolysis Cells due to Reverse Currents

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: The operation of water electrolyzers with renewable energies means that long-term operation also involves several start-up/shut-down cycles of the system. In particular, for alkaline water electrolyzers (AWE) it is known that shut-down leads to reverse currents, which causes electrochemical degradation and thereby reducing the efficiency. In this work, a modeling framework is proposed and implemented for the electrochemical degradation of nickel electrodes in AWE stacks under start-up/shut-down (SU/SD) operation, and it is achieving good agreement with experiments. Such a model can be used for digital twins of electrolysis plants as well as optimizing its operation.

Source: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

DOI: 10.1109/iecon58223.2025.11221489

Authors: Vicente Olguín Godoy, Pooya Davari, Henrik Lund Frandsen, Frede Blaabjerg

Institutions: Aalborg University, Technical University of Denmark

Language: English

Topic: Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion

Subfield: Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Field: Energy

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Affordable and clean energy, Clean water and sanitation

Open Access status: green

Funder: Danmarks Grundforskningsfond