2023-05-08 15:00:20
The American company Bloom Energy has just completed the installation of the largest solid oxide electrolyser on the planet. This one is located in a NASA research center in California.
Installed in the “Ames Research Center”, in the middle of Silicon Valley where NASA has been testing most of its equipment for 20 years, the unit is capable of generating more than 2.4 tonnes of hydrogen per day. A fuel that will be used for the various missions of the American space agency. Developing 4 MW, Bloom Energy’s new electrolyser is much larger than the one deployed in April in Rotterdam by the German company Sunfire, which developed 2.6 MW.
Controlled consumption
The operation of this solid oxide electrolyser takes place at high temperature. When the machine draws on an external heat source, it requires less electricity to generate the same amount of hydrogen than equivalent alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, which operate at low temperatures.
A recent 100 kilowatt demonstration project demonstrated that Bloom’s electrolyser only needs 37.7 kWh of electricity to produce 1 kg of hydrogen (when tapping an external source of high temperature steam) .
This corresponds to a yield 20 to 25% higher than that of other alkaline or PEM electrolysers of the same size. The only drawback: solid oxide electrolyzers have a shorter lifespan.
With 2 gigawatts produced each year at its plants in California and Delaware, Bloom Energy now has one of the largest electrolyser production capacities in the world.
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