Thermal Analysis and Optimization of Cold-Start Process of Alkaline Water Electrolysis System

Abstract

In this paper, a thermal model of commercial alkaline water electrolysis system is presented, including energy and mass balance model between system components and a two-stage graybox model of alkaline electrolyzer. The aim of this work is to study and improve the thermal behavior during cold-start process of electrolysis system. The model is used to simulate the cold-start process under various parametric settings such as electrolyte flow rate and electrolyte volume. Then, several optimization schemes are proposed and evaluated to be promising.