Exploring the State-of-operation of Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolyzers

Proton exchange membrane electrolytic cells (PEMECs) have the potential to provide green Hydrogen as a sustainable energy source. PEMEC has already been applied at an industrially relevant scale. However, it still faces challenges regarding reliability and durability, especially in long-term operation. This review emphasizes the need for standardizing the cell configuration, the testing protocols, and the evaluation procedures to attain the optimum operation settings, and eventually precisely evaluating the degradation rate. Potential physicochemical and electrical operational health indicators are described to identify the degradation of a distinct cell component in a running PEMEC. The reliable evaluation of degradation rate via operational health indicators with a robust supervisory system under stringent operating conditions is likely to diagnose the degradation mechanism. By developing incremental empirical degradation models via mapping a correlation between the history of proposed operational health indicators, the instantaneous degradation rate can be quantified. This approach, in turn, enables us to determine the state-of-operation of an electrolyzer during service, thereby benchmarking the durability of PEMEC. Finally, with the target of scaling up and fulfilling the commercial demands for PEMEC, the significance and literature contributions regarding operation management and prog nostics are expressed.