Optimization techniques for electrochemical devices for hydrogen production and energy storage applications

Abstract

With the rapidly evolving geo-political landscape and unceasing advancements in technology, sustainable energy security is a very important topic. Research indicates that electrochemical energy systems are quite promising to solve many of energy conversion, storage, and conservation challenges while offering high efficiencies and low pollution. The paper provides an overview of electrochemical energy devices and the various optimization techniques used to evaluate them. The optimization techniques include linear regression, factorial design, the Taguchi method, artificial neural networks, filters, and a combination of such methods to improve these systems. To support the growing interest in research, the bulk of this study focuses on a review of the most promising and highly researched electrochemical energy devices, such as fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors. The paper also provides modest commentary on hydrogen production technologies, electrochemical reactors, and membrane separation technologies, amongst other technologies. Building on a previous paper by the authors of this paper on artificial intelligence in hybrid renewable energy systems with fuel cells, this work provides a comparative review of optimization techniques for supercapacitors by highlighting key findings based on model accuracy. A summary of the advantages and disadvantages of the different major optimization techniques is presented. The paper concludes that a combination of optimization techniques is used to overcome the drawbacks of individual techniques, with adaptive filters being the most widely studied. This paper presents studies on the Design of Experiments (DoE) with the goal of building a better understanding of the relationships that exist between different operating variables in various electrochemical devices.