Experimental Study On Factors Affecting The Performance Of Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzer

Using renewable energy to electrolyze water to produce green hydrogen can not only achieve energy storage of renewable energy,but also help chemical,metallurgy,transportation and other industries to achieve decarbonization goals.With the deepen-ing of the carbon neutral strategy,the demand for hydrogen energy will increase greatly in the future,and it is expected that hydrogen energy will account for 20%of the final energy consumption in 2060.However,due to cost reasons,water electrolysis for hy-drogen production cannot be applied on a large scale.Obviously,the development of high-efficiency and low-cost water electrolysis technology is very important to meet the huge demand for green hydrogen in the future..Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis technology combines the ad-vantages of traditional alkaline water electrolysis and proton exchange membrane water electrolysis,which can not only use non-precious metal catalysts but also achieve high current density.However,the factors affecting the performance of the current anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer（AEMWE）are still unclear,and its performance still has room for improvement.The membrane electrode assembly is the core compo-nent of AEMWE,and optimizing the preparation process of the membrane electrode is an important way to improve its performance.In addition,the performance of the mem-brane electrode assembly will change with the change of the operating conditions.Therefore,the optimization of the membrane electrode assembly and proper operating conditions are very important to improve the performance of AEMWE,which is the focus of this paper.The main research contents are as follows:（1）To improve the practical AEMWE membrane electrode preparation and elec-trolyzer assembly process.And use the AEMWE test system built to summarize a set of standardized test procedures and data processing solutions.A high current density performance of 5 A/cm² was achieved at 2.3 V using a non-noble metal commercial gas diffusion electrode.（2）Using non-precious metal catalysts,domestic anion exchange membranes,ion-omers and other materials to explore the effect of membrane electrode assemblies on the performance of AEMWE.And through the voltage loss decoupling analysis,the various voltage losses inside AEMWE are quantified.Proper gas diffusion layer thick-ness minimizes ohmic losses and mass transfer losses in the electrolyzer.The anion exchange membrane not only affects the ohmic loss,but also greatly affects the kinetic loss.The kinetic loss of the domestic membrane is 16%higher than that of the imported brand.When domestic ionomer is used with Ni Fe₂O₄ anode catalyst,the optimum con-tent is about 15 wt%.（3）The effect of operating conditions on the performance of AEMWE was ex-plored.Domestic membranes and ionomers have higher temperature tolerance and can work stably at least around 80°C.The appropriate liquid supply rate per square centi-meter is 1～2 m L/min,and the kinetic loss is the smallest at this time.The anode liquid supply method is more suitable for AEMWE,which can not only achieve the best per-formance,but also directly produce dry hydrogen.AEMWE with pure water has poor performance and 1 M KOH is still the best choice for now.