Water electrolysers with closed and open electrochemical systems

Abstract

Green hydrogen production using renewables-powered, low-temperature water electrolysers is crucial for rapidly decarbonizing the industrial sector and with it many chemical transformation processes. However, despite decades of research, advances at laboratory scale in terms of catalyst design and insights into underlying processes have not resulted in urgently needed improvements in water electrolyser performance or higher deployment rates. In light of recent developments in water electrolyser devices with modified architectures and designs integrating concepts from Li-ion or redox flow batteries, we discuss practical challenges hampering the scaling-up and large-scale deployment of water electrolysers. We highlight the role of device architectures and designs, and how engineering concepts deserve to be integrated into fundamental research to accelerate synergies between materials science and engineering, and also to achieve industry-scale deployment. New devices require benchmarking and assessment in terms of not only their performance metrics, but also their scalability and deployment potential.