Progress of PEM Application

Application progress of PEM water electrolysis for hydrogen production

The accelerated development of renewable energy makes large-scale consumption of renewable energy a prominent problem. Power-to-Gas (P2G) converts renewable energy power generation into hydrogen, which can improve the flexibility of the power system and is becoming an important direction for the development and application of renewable energy.

PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production technology has the advantages of rapid start and stop, which can match the volatility of renewable energy power generation, and gradually become the mainstream technology of P2G hydrogen production. In the past 10 years, the world has accelerated the construction of renewable energy PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production demonstration projects, and the number of demonstration projects and the scale of monomers have shown a trend of increasing year by year.

At present, PEM water electrolysis for hydrogen production has entered the stage of 10 MW demonstration application, and 100 MW PEM electrolyzers are under development. NEL-Proton, SIEMENS, ITM Power and other companies are leading in technology and equipment manufacturing.

The United States and the European Union are the key regions in the global development of P2G, and have formulated detailed development plans. In 2014, the European Union proposed the development goals of PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production technology: the first step is to develop a distributed PEM water electrolysis system for large-scale hydrogen refueling stations to meet the hydrogen demand for transportation; the second step is to produce 10, 100, 250 MW PEM electrolyzers , to meet the demand for industrial hydrogen; the third step is to develop a PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production system that meets the needs of large-scale hydrogen energy storage.

In 2015, SIEMENS, Linde Group and other companies invested in the construction of the world’s first MW-scale wind power PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production demonstration project in Mainz Energy Park, Germany. The hydrogen is supplied to local hydrogen refueling stations and industrial enterprises, and the surplus hydrogen is directly injected into the natural gas pipeline network. When the price of renewable electricity is lower than 3 euro cents/kWh, the project will start the PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production equipment, and vice versa.

Carbon-intensive industries such as oil refining, chemical industry, and steel are also important application scenarios for PEM water electrolysis to produce hydrogen. In 2019, Shell and ITM Power cooperated to build a 10 MW renewable energy PEM water electrolysis hydrogen plant at the Rheinland refinery in Germany, which can provide the refinery with 1,300 t of green hydrogen per year.

Offshore wind power will develop on a larger scale and move to deep seas. However, the implementation is faced with the bottleneck of difficult and high cost of power grid construction. Hydrogen production from offshore wind power will be a potential path to realize the economical and effective development of far-reaching offshore wind resources. At present, Shell, SIEMENS, Ørsted, TenneT and other companies are promoting the EU’s offshore wind power hydrogen production from conceptual design to demonstration application, which will be another important application field of PEM water electrolysis hydrogen production technology in the future.

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