Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSPOffshore wind turbines generate significantly more electricity than their onshore counterparts, and they do so more consistently. The H2Mare hydrogen flagship project aims to harness this potential by using renewable electricity directly at sea to produce hydrogen and hydrogen-based products.
The future partners want to integrate the water electrolyzer directly into a wind turbine, thereby providing innovative technologies for producing green hydrogen offshore. The direct coupling of wind turbines and electrolysers is intended to minimise the costs of hydrogen production. Without a connection to the power grid, infrastructure costs can be significantly reduced. In addition, decoupling electrolysis from the grid means less strain on local grid structures. Another advantage of hydrogen production at sea is that there is far more potential area available for wind energy generation than on land.
Summary
Development of the fundamentals for the world's first direct offshore hydrogen production, fundamentals for electrolysis technology for offshore operation, possibilities for storing and transporting hydrogen on land, and optimal coordination of subsystems to increase the efficiency of the overall system.
Research topics IMWS
Optimization of cell and stack development at the microstructural level and aging phenomena under offshore conditions, as well as the development of a research stack to derive electrolyzer behavior at industrial stack size, including operando analytics
Focus
Investigation of the aging of electrolyzer components under offshore conditions, identification of relevant defects under operating conditions.
Methods
SEM, TEM, EDX, CT, XRD, XPS, ToF-SIMS, IR spectroscopy, magnetic field measurement, lock-in thermography, LIBS.
