| Work Detail |
Researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, in Chile, are developing equipment that seeks to produce green hydrogen with high efficiency.
Scientists from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Chilean Technical University Federico Santa María (USM) develop a converter model to achieve the production of green hydrogen with a high level of efficiency.
As described by the USM itself, the project "has the purpose of optimizing the efficiency of the green hydrogen production process, which is carried out by electrolysis of water using renewable energy from a photovoltaic solar plant."
This is how the project director, Antonio Sánchez, explains it: “the green hydrogen industry in Chile is supposed to move gigawatts of power, therefore, any loss that exists in the process is of great importance. The objective of this project is to develop a high performance system that guarantees very low associated losses”.
"To do this -he continues- we are designing a high-efficiency static converter, based on power electronics, which will take charge of managing the energy between the photovoltaic panels and the electrolyser".
The base location that they have taken as a reference is the north of the country, with high solar radiation. "This determines that the converter must have certain characteristics that adapt to this modality, due to the intermittency and variability of solar energy," he says.
The work, entitled "Coupling of electrolyzers and renewable generation for the efficient production of green hydrogen", participates in the Public Challenges contest of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID, of the Ministry of Energy.
The USM is one of the five participating teams, whose first phase includes the construction of a prototype validated in computer environments, with modeling and computer simulation.
The next phase, of validation in real environments, will last 14 months "and will lead to the choice of a project for the final stage, which will consist of the implementation and demonstration of the prototype in the real environment, with a maximum period of 16 months," he explained.
According to the deputy director of the project, Patricio Valdivia, "we have made significant progress in our development, we believe that it is a fairly innovative technology, for which reason we have already generated a patent application through the Technology Transfer and Licensing Office (OTTL) of the University". |
