An Intelligent Condition-Monitoring Framework for Alkaline Water Electrolyzers Based on Hybrid Physics-Informed Health Indicators

Alkaline Water Electrolyzers (AWEs) are critical for green hydrogen production but face operational risks due to volatile renewable energy inputs. This study proposes an intelligent condition-monitoring framework that leverages a hybrid physics-informed machine learning (ML) methodology to construct Health Indicators (HIs). The core innovation lies in addressing the challenge of inaccessible internal states. First, a high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is developed and experimentally validated, serving as a physics-informed data generator to simulate multiphysics behavior under various operating and fault conditions. From this reliable simulation basis, a comprehensive dataset is produced, and eight key operational parameters are derived as HIs. This dataset is then used to train and benchmark three ML models for rapid health state classification. The Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) model achieves superior performance with 90.43% accuracy, effectively translating the validated physical understanding into a fast, deployable intelligent monitoring agent. This work presents a viable pathway for constructing reliable HIs and implementing AI-enhanced condition monitoring for AWEs, contributing to safer and more efficient green hydrogen production.