team photo


Team 19

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Jared Anderson
Joey Bras-Jorge
Phillip Tang

Dr. Ioulia Valla

Sponsor

UConn School of Engineering

sponsored by
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Renewable Hydrogen

In an ever-growing world that is more interconnected than ever, our reliance on energy is at its greatest demand. Current methods of energy production involve combustion of fossil fuels that pollute and damage our environment. Globally, we are using as much as 84 million barrels of oil every day, resulting in an annual 0.32 ℉ increase in global temperature (1). Thus, it is imperative that we search and develop renewable sources of energy, such as hydrogen fuel. We want to focus on hydrogen production through electrolyzing water into its component gasses, hydrogen and oxygen. Today’s power plants are already producing hydrogen fuel, but most of it is gray hydrogen because it uses methane and coal in steam reforming and gasification reactions. Our project will focus on the production of green hydrogen, which has minimal environmental impact and only relies on renewable, carbon neutral sources such as solar and wind power. PEM electrolysis is based on basic electrolysis cell design, but relies on ion transport between two electrolyte solutions across a membrane to increase efficiency. Through the process of PEM electrolysis, we are determining if it is economically feasible to meet our energy needs with hydrogen in place of current fossil fuel methods.