Effective suppression for overshoot voltage of PEM electrolyzer by power supply

Mingzhi He, Gongzhe Nie, Haoran Yang, Xiongzheng Wang, Shuhan Zhou and Xin Meng

Applied Energy, 2025, vol. 379, issue C, No S0306261924023249

Abstract: Renewable energy generation which inherently has intermittent and fluctuating characteristics, makes Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzers operate intermittently. Specially, the overshoot voltage phenomenon will be happened when the electrolyzer power increase rapidly to stable operate. This can cause the electrolyzer to operate overload, which reduce hydrogen production efficiency, increase power supply capacity and reduce its reliability. In this work, for suppressing overshoot voltage and protecting electrolyzer, the electrolyzer voltage is controlled through the power supply outputs a DC-biased voltage with a sine waveform. Comparing with the traditional protection scheme, the overshoot voltage is reduced by 17.5 % ∼ 30.5 % during low power operation. Noteworthily, the overshoot voltage is disappeared completely and the polarization voltage can be reduced by 7.6 % ∼ 13.5 % when the electrolyzer is in high power operation. Furthermore, the anode catalyst layer is characterized by the advanced characterization such as scanning electron microscopes (SEM), X-ray diffractometers (XRD), and micro-CT. It is found that the micrometer-scale pore collapse and the ion leaching will be suppressed by regulating electrolyzer voltage. Finally, through COMSOL Multiphysics simulations confirm that the reduction of pore diameter will increase the electrolyzer internal resistance and current distribution inhomogeneity which have a significant impact on the overshoot voltage behavior. Consequently, the research results provide a theoretical basis for designing a new generation of power supply-side electrolyzer protection schemes and membrane electrode.

Keywords: Overshoot voltage; PEM electrolyzer; Suppression scheme; COMSOL multiphysics simulation; Power supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924023249
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:379:y:2025:i:c:s0306261924023249

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124941

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().