High‐Stability Electrodes for High‐Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells by Using Advanced Nanocarbonaceous Materials

Abstract

This work studies the stability and performance of a cathodic electrode for high‐temperature proton exchange membrane (HT‐PEMFC) systems prepared with a carbon nanosphere (CNS) based microporous layer and carbon nanofibers (CNFp) used as a catalyst support. The obtained results are compared with a standard Vulcan carbon XC72 based electrode. With this purpose, two membrane−electrode assemblies (MEAs) were prepared using the cathodic electrodes and tested in a 25 cm2 HT‐PEMFC system. Preliminary short‐life tests around 330 h were carried out with both MEAs. During the tests, different characterization procedures, consisting of polarization curves, spectroscopy impedance analysis, cyclic voltammetry and linear sweep voltammetry were performed in order to evaluate the evolution of the main stability and performance parameters of the MEAs. Results showed that the application of these new materials increases positively the stability of the MEA in comparison with the standard Vulcan carbon XC72 material, with a negligible decrease in the performance of the advanced MEA during all tests, making these results very promising to overcome the service lifetime limitations of these systems.

Storage of energy using a gas-liquid H2/Cl2 fuel cell: A first approach to electrochemically-assisted absorbers

“…Opposite, in prototypes 3 and 4, the membrane is integrated in a MEA made by hot-pressing the membrane in between the cathode and the anode. This whole system was hot-pressed at 120ºC and 1 ton for 5 min (Zamora et al, 2017;Kang et al, 2019).…”

Performance of an HT‐PEMFC having a catalyst with graphene and multiwalled carbon nanotube support

“…HT‐PEMFC, which can operate between 120°C to 200°C, has a higher tolerance to carbon monoxide and higher reaction rates than LT‐PEMFC that can operate below 80°C . Due to these merits of HT‐PEMFC, a significant amount of research has been carried out on improving the performance of the HT‐PEMFCs through testing these fuel cells made of alternative materials . Finding suitable materials for anode and cathode electrocatalysts has been the main core of these research activities since these materials are pricy and affect the reaction kinetics, thus the fuel cell performance.…”