Development State of a Unitized Reversible Cell

Abstract

A PEM-type unitized reversible cell (URC) is a device combined the functionality of water electrolyzer (WE) and a fuel cell (FC) in one electrochemical cell. URC can work as either of WE or FC by switching operation depending on the demand, so that URC has the potential to reduce device cost, installation space, and to raise operating rate compared to the dedicated use of WE and FC. Therefore, URC should become a key energy conversion device for a distributed energy system or emergency power supply if it is used with a hydrogen storage system such as high pressure tank or metal hydride Alloy. For practical use, it is necessary to improve the performance and durability of the URC up to the level of the dedicated cells. In this paper, development state of URC system is described.