Estonia’s Stargate Hydrogen has announced that the company is ready to launch its alkaline electrolyser stack. So far, it has been shown that these stacks have been built effectively and have an 80% stack-level efficiency.

It has been stated by the European manufacturer that their ‘Stellar 100’ stack is said to be the ‘most efficient’ stack available on the market for green hydrogen production. This was discovered after the stack, which was developed through a joint collaboration between European suppliers, was tested by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden - Württemberg (ZSW). These tests revealed extremely positive results and highlighted high levels of stack-level efficiency.

These stacks are manufactured out of stacks of multiple cells and altogether they make up the core component of the electrolyser. This design provides efficient and effective ion transport, along with gas separation. The benefits of the high efficiency levels that these stacks offer, lead to the system overall requiring less energy for efficient operation. Consequently, this leads to a reduction in the cost of producing hydrogen.

Manager of the electrolyser test field (ElyLab) at ZSW, Thomas Ottitsch, said that ‘testing of Stellar 100 showed the average cell voltage to be lower than 1.85V at 0.5 A/cm2, 15 barg and 70oC, which he said corresponded to a stack-level efficiency of 80% (HHV).’

The next steps for this project, involve Stargate Hydrogen moving forwards to beginning deliveries of the innovative electrolyser stack. The Stellar 100 will begin distribution in summer of 2024 and it has already been planned that the first two to go out, will go to a 1MW Estonian project, whilst the other goes to a 1MW project, located in Germany.

Ottitsch, commented, “Our independence and scientific approach ensure that the results obtained in these tests can be compared to other tests with high confidence.”

Chief Commercial Officer at Stargate Hydrogen, Jan Grolig, added, that ‘the launch comes as a “major milestone” for the company.’ He continued, “We seized a unique opportunity to develop a new alkaline stack generation considering best practices and avoiding known issues in current alkaline stack design.”