Synthesis and Investigation of Electrode–Diaphragm Assemblies for Alkaline Water Electrolysis

Reduced energy consumption is one of the main requirements for application of water electrolyzers with alkaline electrolyte for small-scale power industry. The energy consumption can be reduced, among other things, by changing the assembling of electrodes and diaphragm material. The phase inversion method, which is used for fabricating the polymer-based porous diaphragms for alkaline water electrolyzers, enabled us to develop an electrode–diaphragm assembly in which the electrodes with the catalytic layers and the diaphragm material comprise a single unit. The electrolysis cells with the electrode–diaphragm assemblies of various compositions and the cells of conventional “zero-gap” design are studied.