Green hydrogen hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water using renewable energy, is becoming more popular than other forms of hydrogen, due to its lower greenhouse gas emissions. Its production is forecasted to become the leading form of hydrogen generation by 2050 , in an attempt to limit global warming effects.
However, green hydrogen production suffers from scalability issues, as large-scale water electrolysis is limited by the efficiency of the actual electrolysis process. Such efficiency problems arise from the formation of bubbles on the electrodes, which eventually rise with the motion of the water surrounding said electrode. These bubbles in turn are capable of coalescing and producing a boundary-like layer around the electrode. This "plume" affects the efficiency of the electrolysis process.
This master thesis aims to aid in the understanding of how said bubble formation affects the efficiency of the electrolysis process, by creating point-bubble simulations to model the thought-to-be stochastic generation of bubbles on an electrode, their dynamics (growth and detachment) near the electrode, and the collision between bubbles. This will hopefully help to better understand how these bubbles evolve inside of the electrolyser.