PEMWE (proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer) uses a polymer electrolyte membrane as an electrolyte and requires high manufacturing costs because precious metals are used as catalysts. Accordingly, many studies are being conducted to increase th...
PEMWE (proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer) uses a polymer electrolyte membrane as an electrolyte and requires high manufacturing costs because precious metals are used as catalysts. Accordingly, many studies are being conducted to increase the hydrogen production efficiency of PEMWE. A general PEMWE uses a titanium mesh as a PTL (porous transport layer) for a constant current supply. However, the mesh disturbs the water contaction to the electrolyte membrane because the produced gas during the chemical reaction is not smoothly discharged. Therefore, this study compared the performance with various flow channel designs to improve gas reduction and water supply. Three types of flow channels, including serial type, parallel type, and dual-channel type, were designed and compared their performances. Water was supplied at 15 mL/min, 90 °C, and performances were measured with current densities ranging from 0 A/cm² to 0.8 A/cm². At a current density of 0.8 A/cm², the basic type was 3.80 V, the serial type was 3.13 V, the parallel type was 3.39 V and the dual-channel type was 3.27 V. The serial type has the best performance because gas discharge is more active than other flow channels.