Episode 47 · Engineering Deep Dives
Electrolyser Design: Toll Roads for Electrons
A drifting cell voltage sends Mariam, a fictional process engineer, looking for what is ageing inside a hydrogen stack. Explore water-splitting thermodynamics, alkaline, PEM, solid oxide and AEM electrolysers, then follow the tradeoffs between current density, efficiency, iridium, degradation and cost. The episode connects the stack to pressure, purity, balance of plant and operation with solar and wind. Story characters, plants and illustrative story numbers are fictional.
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Inside this episode
- Cold open: the stack that lost its voltage
- Splitting water from first principles
- The four families: alkaline, PEM, solid oxide and AEM
- Inside the stack: plates, layers and the membrane electrode assembly
- Iridium: the rarest bottleneck
- Current density, efficiency and the shape of the trade-off
- Degradation: how stacks grow old
- Pressure, purity and the electrode as a landscape
- Balance of plant: everything that is not the stack
- Dynamic operation with renewables
- Cost per kilogram: the number everyone fights about
- Mariam's fix and what it teaches
Production credits & AI disclosure
Scripts generated with Claude Opus. Synthetic narration generated with Edge TTS. Reviewed, listened to, and approved by Sankalp Thakur.