Estonia’s Stargate Hydrogen is set to officially launch its alkaline electrolysis stack, slated to have 80% stack-level efficiency.
The company revealed its European-manufactured “Stellar 100” stack, claimed to be among the “most efficient” stacks for green hydrogen production on the market, will be launched at the World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam next month (May 2024).
Jointly developed with European suppliers, the stack was tested by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), revealing high levels of stack-level efficiency.
Thomas Ottitsch, Manager of the electrolyser test field (ElyLab) at ZSW, said testing of Stellar 100 showed the average cell voltage to be lower than 1.85V at 0.5 A/cm2, 15 barg and 70oC, which he said corresponded to a stack-level efficiency of 80% (HHV).
Coming as the core electrolyser component, stacks consist of multiple cells to ensure efficient ion transport and gas separation. Higher stack efficiencies will allow less energy to be used, further lowering the cost of hydrogen production.
“Our independence and scientific approach ensure that the results obtained in these tests can be compared to other tests with high confidence,” Ottitsch added.
Saying the launch comes as a “major milestone” for the company, Jan Grolig, Chief Commercial Officer at Stargate Hydrogen, said, “We seized a unique opportunity to develop a new alkaline stack generation considering best practices and avoiding known issues in current alkaline stack design.”
Stargate Hydrogen will kick-start deliveries of the Stellar 100 stack this summer, with the first two earmarked for a 1MW project in Estonia and a 1MW project in Germany.
Meeting scale: PEM and alkaline leading the electrolyser charge
Green hydrogen has landed itself a place in global energy discussion as the world looks to decarbonise, with the clean energy carrier expected to play a role across mobility, energy and industry.
However, if that potential is to be realised, an immense scale-up of technologies needed to produce green hydrogen will be required.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 2030, if all electrolyser projects in the global pipeline were implemented, it would lead to an installed electrolyser capacity of between 170GW and 365GW¹, but as with almost all technologies, there is debate over which route offers the most promising results.
Water electrolysis for hydrogen production is no new technology. In fact, it’s over 200 years old. Using an electrochemical reaction, electrolysis splits water into its component elements of hydrogen and oxygen.
In recent years however, somewhat of a two-horse race has formed, between two different systems that appear to be dominating global green hydrogen production projects: Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) and alkaline…
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