Green hydrogen is a potent energy carrier and raw material for a large number of end products in e.g. chemical and fuel manufacturing industries, facilitating transition off from fossil fuels towards clean, sustainable energy and industrial ecosystem. Green hydrogen is produced from water via electrolysis powered by renewable energy. Solid Oxide cell and stack technology is amongst the most efficient ways of green hydrogen production, but this far, the cost of electrolysers based on this technology has hindered its larger scale adoption.
The project PilotSOEL tackles this challenge by developing ways to automate and scale up Solid Oxide stack manufacturing. At the moment, the stack production often contains several manual phases, which slows down the process and increases the price of the end product and thus, that of produced hydrogen.
Automated stack production requires also automated, on-line quality control. In the PilotSOEL project, Optical Inspection System (OIS) has been developed to improve stack component recognition, stacking accuracy, defect detection, and overall assembly quality. In the first phase, the OIS Generation I system is integrated to the still manually operable stack assembly station, and in the later phase of the project, this approach will be conceptualized for fully automated stack manufacturing line with OIS Generation II.
The developed OIS is an example of a modern machine vision solution that, in addition to visual quality control, also controls the actual assembly process. The system's interactive user interface guides the manual assembly step by step and ensures the success of each step using machine vision. Advanced imaging technology combined with a server-based modular software architecture enables not only easy scaling of production capacity but also seamless remote services. The OIS has been developed in collaboration between Elcogen Oy and Lateral Engine Oy, a Finnish company specializing in advanced machine vision and learning solutions.
The results from the OIS Generation I have been promising, enabling stack component recognition, confirmation of the stacking order, detection of possible defective components, measurement of component placement accuracy, and generation of full assembly data for both the SRU (Single Repeating Unit) and main stack assembly levels.
The work to pave way towards high throughput, cost-efficient and high quality Solid Oxide stack production continues with the goal to launch the fully optimized OIS Generation II compatible with an automated stack assembly line at the end of the project.
PilotSOEL consortium consists of experienced industry and research partners with complementary competences. Thin film coating companies Beneq Oy (Finland) and Naco Technologies (Latvia) are joined by solid oxide cell and stack experts from Elcogen AS (Estonia), Elcogen OY (Finland) and the Technical University of Denmark to develop upscaled, automated manufacturing processes for high-performing solid oxide electrolysers. A comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) and techno-economic analysis will be carried out for novel SOE stack by the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). The project started in June 2023 and its duration is 36 months.
The PilotSOEL project will strengthen the leading position of key European industries and SMEs in the field of solid oxide electrolysis technology and pave the way towards efficient and more sustainable production of affordable green hydrogen.
For more information about the project please visit PilotSOEL LinkedIn channel.
For more information about machine vision solutions check Lateral Engine Oy website.