Computational study on a thermoelectric system used to dry out the hydrogen produced in an alkaline electrolyser

The green hydrogen is meant to be the next generation heat carrier. It is the storage solution of the renewable energies that lack of manageability. In this work, the feasibility of substituting the conventional purity phase of a 50 kW alkaline water electrolyser for a thermoelectric refrigerator (TER) is studied. The TER reduces the temperature of the hydrogen flow to the dew temperature where the maximum amount of water is less than 20 ppmv, the purity objective. The simulated results show that thermoelectricity outperforms conventional technologies; it reduces more than the 90% of the cost of using nitrogen and more than the 60% is reduced if “pure” hydrogen is used to regenerate the conventional desiccant systems. Moreover, the lack of maintenance that thermoelectrics presents is a decisive factor if this technology is proposed to substitute the purity phase of a continuous working water electrolyser.