Repetitive hot-press approach for performance enhancement of hydrogen fuel cells

For Nafion 212-based PEM fuel cells assembled with gas diffusion electrodes, two stage hot-press with conditioning or hydration between presses was found to improve performance and to allow the cell to sustain higher current densities. Testing refuted additional time as a driving factor for increase...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of power sources Vol. 247; pp. 384 - 390
Main Authors GLASSMAN, M, OMOSEBI, A, BESSER, R. S
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier 01.02.2014
Subjects
Applied sciences
Direct energy conversion and energy accumulation
Electrical engineering. Electrical power engineering
Electrical power engineering
Electrochemical conversion: primary and secondary batteries, fuel cells
Energy
Energy. Thermal use of fuels
Equipments for energy generation and conversion: thermal, electrical, mechanical energy, etc
Exact sciences and technology
Fuel cells
Performance evaluation
Ionomer
Polymer electrolytes
Membrane electrode assembly
Polymer solid electrolyte
Hydrogen fuel cells
Sulfonate copolymer
Hot pressing
Tetrafluoroethylene copolymer
PEMFC
Nafion
Cation exchange membrane
Performance
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells
Hot-press
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Summary:For Nafion 212-based PEM fuel cells assembled with gas diffusion electrodes, two stage hot-press with conditioning or hydration between presses was found to improve performance and to allow the cell to sustain higher current densities. Testing refuted additional time as a driving factor for increased performance and the optimal hot-press time of 3 min from literature is confirmed. The two-stage hot-press process is shown to decrease ohmic resistance and to increase performance by a greater factor for Nafion 212 than Nafion 115. Tafel plots are constructed to focus on kinetics and give insight into the behavior of each membrane. Gains from hot-press and sequential hot-pressings are shown to be largely due to the suppression of kinetic overpotential. A correlation between water content and fuel cell performance in hot-press processes indicates that excessive hot-press limits the water content of a membrane, lending further support to an existence of an optimal hot-press time.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:0378-7753
1873-2755
DOI:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2013.08.090