EVALUATING THE EFFICIENT WATER ELECTROLYSIS FOR HYDROGEN GENERATION USING SOLAR ENERGY

Hydrogen is vital when looking at many industrial processes. It is used as a refrigerant and as an essential gas in superconductor research, ultra-cold condition research, hydrogen-electric car, energy generation, space industry, and electricity industry. Due to the development of photo-voltaic technology, the production of electricity from solar energy has been drastically increased. Because of its inherent fluctuation of solar power dependent on weather conditions, several charging techniques are required. However, there exist major drawbacks when charging the huge amount of electricity. This study was to investigate whether it could be possible to effectively obtain hydrogen from water hydrolysis with electricity generated from the sunlight generators.

Based on our observation, it was concluded that 18.0 ~21.0 volts of electricity were generated in 1200 lux of light intensity, which created an average of 2000 mL hydrogen when the 5% NaCl solution was used as the electrolyte. Four solutions of tap water, 0.1N HCl, 0.1 NaOH and salt solutions were examined to find which solution could be the most effective for producing hydrogen. The result led us to conclude that our hypothesis was accepted seeing the linear relationship of the light intensity and exposure time with hydrogen gas generation. The NaCl solution should be the best solution for water electrolysis using solar energy among the solutions examined in the study. The ratio of hydrogen and oxygen was varied according to each electrolyte solution. More detailed study might be needed for the optimization of maximal hydrogen acquisition.