Zirfon® as Separator Material for Water Electrolysis Under Specific Conditions

Abstract

Hydrogen production through alkaline water electrolysis requires improvements to use renewable energy more efficiently. In the process of converting electrical to chemical energy, efforts are focused on reducing energy loss. Electrolysers play two important roles in this process: one of them is as a hydrogen producer and the other is as a storage mechanism. A storage mechanism occurs when there is an excess of renewable energy that can be stored in the form of hydrogen (chemical energy), which is the fuel for the following step, turning chemical into electrical energy again. Electrolysers research is focused on: separators and electrodes materials, electrolytic solutions and cell design. The ideal situation for a separator in an electrolyser is to possess low electric resistance. For that purpose, we compared Zirfon®, silicone and the system without separator. This work studied the behaviour of Zirfon® under specific working conditions: room temperature, an electrolytic solution of potassium hydroxide 35 % w/w and five different distances between electrodes. In order to carry out this experiment, we designed and constructed a special electrolytic cell. The experimental results showed that Zirfon® separator increases the system resistance approximately 15 % when compared to the same system without separator, but it reduces resistance when compared to silicone (excellent insulator). Another result proved that the distances between electrodes proposed in this work did not show bubbles resistance because the system performance improved as the distance became shorter.