An Efficiency Study of Hydrogen Production by Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis Cells Coupled with Photovoltaic Thermal System

Abstract

Mathematical models of Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis cells (PEMWE) and Photovoltaic Thermal system (PVT) have been developed to perform the parametric study of the hydrogen production process and to test a proposed PEMWE optimized cell number controller. PEMWE coupled with a single 200W flat plate PVT panel can produce hydrogen at 3, 145.30 g/year and 3, 651.40 g/year when the position of the PVT panel is fixed and trackable along with the sun's position, respectively. Increasing the cooling water flow rate in the PVT system results in an increase in overall efficiency and hydrogen production. The hydrogen's yield gradually decreases when the cooling water flow rate is higher than the critical point. By configuring the system to operate at the maximum power point of the PV, the system does not produce hydrogen at the highest efficiency. Hence, the operating points of the system are then optimized by adopting the algorithm for selecting the appropriate PEMWE cell numbers. The hydrogen's yield can be further increased to 4.15% and 3.78% for the fixed position PVT and the sun tracking PVT with a cooling water flow rate of 0.04 kg/s accordingly.