Green hydrogen production using renewables-powered, low-temperature water electrolysers is crucial for rapidly decarbonizing the industrial sector and with it many chemical transformation processes. However, despite decades of research, advances at laboratory scale in terms of catalyst design and insights into underlying processes have not resulted in urgently needed improvements in water electrolyser performance or higher deployment rates. In light of recent developments in water electrolyser devices with modified architectures and designs integrating concepts from Li-ion or redox flow batteries, we discuss practical challenges hampering the scaling-up and large-scale deployment of water electrolysers. We highlight the role of device architectures and designs, and how engineering concepts deserve to be integrated into fundamental research to accelerate synergies between materials science and engineering, and also to achieve industry-scale deployment. New devices require benchmarking and assessment in terms of not only their performance metrics, but also their scalability and deployment potential.

使用可再生能源供电的低温水电解槽生产绿色氢气对于快速使工业部门脱碳并伴随其进行许多化学转化过程至关重要。然而，尽管进行了数十年的研究，但是在实验室规模上催化剂设计的进步以及对基础过程的深入了解并未导致迫切需要改进电解水器性能或提高部署速度。鉴于水电解装置的最新发展以及结合锂离子或氧化还原液流电池概念的改进架构和设计，我们讨论了阻碍水电解装置规模化和大规模部署的实际挑战。我们重点介绍设备架构和设计的作用，以及如何将工程概念整合到基础研究中，以加快材料科学与工程之间的协同作用，并实现行业规模的部署。新设备不仅需要根据性能指标，还需要根据其可扩展性和部署潜力进行基准测试和评估。