Student Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Energy Technology or similar (f/m/x) - Modelling and validation of an alkaline electrolysis cell

The DLR’s Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics is working on the utilization of technologies of energy conversion that are efficient and accommodating on resources as well as on the accelerated utilization of renewable energies. Within this context the Department of Energy System Integration at Stuttgart, Germany, invites applicants from all over the world to work with us.

The non-necessity of rare resources and the robustness of alkaline electrolysis make this technology indispensable for scaling up to large hydrogen production volumes. However, a weakness of this technology is its limited dynamics, which is mainly due to gas impurities caused by hydrogen on the oxygen side that exceed
a safety-critical level at low loads. In the group for low-temperature electrolysis systems, the simulation tool TEMPEST is being extended to simulate alkaline electrolysis reactors. The core of this is the medium model, which represents the two-phase mixture of KOH and dissolved gases.

This work should deal with the connection between model and experiments. A single cell test stand with an alkaline electrolysis cell is to be modelled from existing partial components in Modelica/Dymola and tests are carried out on it. With the results, the cell model is to be parameterized and possibly improved. Subsequently,
experiments are to be carried out to validate the two-phase substance model.

The following tasks must be completed for implementation:

• modelling of a single cell test stand
• conducting experiments to measure polarization curves
• model parameterization
• planning and implementation of experiments to validate the two-phase media model
• validation of the two-phase media model