Electrochemical production of hydrogen in reactors with reduced energy costs

Abstract

To reduce climate change and carbonization of the atmosphere, today it is proposed to switch to green energy and use hydrogen as an energy source. When hydrogen burns, water forms, and carbon oxides are not released. Methods for processing solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels, as well as water electrolysis, are proposed for hydrogen production. The electrolysis of water ensures the production of chemically pure hydrogen. Its disadvantage is significant energy consumption and, as a result, high cost. The condition for the economically beneficial use of hydrogen is to reduce its cost to $1/kg. The existing designs of reactors and technologies for producing hydrogen do not allow achieving such efficiency, which is limited by the thermodynamics of the process. To reduce energy consumption, this paper proposes designs of reactors in which the process of oxygen evolution is replaced by the process of dissolving anodes made from production waste - iron and aluminium scrap. As a result of the measures taken, it is possible to reduce the voltage on the electrolyzers from 1.8 V to 0.5-0.6 V. This makes the hydrogen production process economically viable.