Calculating the Fundamental Parameters to Assess the Explosion Risk Due to Crossover in Electrolysers

With the predicted high demand of hydrogen projected to support the neutral carbon society transition in the coming years, the production of hydrogen is set to increase alongside the demand. As electrolysis is set to be amongst the main solutions for green hydrogen production, ensuring the safety of electrolysers during operation will become a central concern. This is mainly due to the crossover risk (hydrogen into oxygen or the other way around) in the separators as throughout the years several cases of incidents have been reported. This study aims to evaluate the methodologies for calculating H2/O2 detonation cell size and laminar flame velocity using detailed kinetic mechanisms at the operating conditions of electrolysers (up to 35 bar and 360 K). Therefore, the modeling of H2/O2 and H2/Air shock tube delay times and laminar flame speeds at initial different pressures and temperature based on the GRI mech 3.0 [1], Mevel et al.[2], Li et al.[3], Lutz et al. [4] and Burke et al. [5] kinetic mechanisms were performed and compared with the available experimental data in the literature. In each case, a best candidate mechanism was then chosen to build a database for the detonation cell size then for the laminar flame speeds up to the operating conditions of electrolysers (293-360K and 1-35 bar).