Effects of impurities on pre-doped and post-doped membranes for high temperature PEM fuel cell stacks

Araya, Samuel Simon (author), Thomas, Sobi (author), Lotrič, Andrej (author), Sahlin, Simon Lennart (author), Liso, Vincenzo (author), Andreasen, Søren J. (author)

In this paper, we experimentally investigated two high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) stacks for their response to the presence of reformate impurities in an anode gas stream. The investigation was aimed at characterizing the effects of reformate impurities at the stack level, including in humidified conditions and identifying fault features for diagnosis purposes. Two HT-PEMFC stacks of 37 cells each with active areas of 165 cm2 were used with one stack containing a pre-doped membrane with a woven gas diffusion layer (GDL) and the other containing a post-doped membrane with non-woven GDL. Polarization curves and galvanostatic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used for characterization. We found that both N2 dilution and impurities in the anode feed affected mainly the charge transfer losses, especially on the anode side. We also found that humidification alleviated the poisoning effects of the impurities in the stack with pre-doped membrane electrode assemblies (MEA) and woven GDL but had detrimental effects on the stack with post-doped MEAs and non-woven GDL. We demonstrated that pure and dry hydrogen operation at the end of the tests resulted in significant recovery of the performance losses due to impurities for both stacks even after the humidified reformate operation. This implies that there was only limited acid loss during the test period of around 150 h for each stack.

• Language: English
• Keywords: proton exchange membrane, fuel cell, fault, diagnosis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, distribution of relaxation times, reformate
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FS - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2021
• Number of pages: Str. 1-18
• Numbering: Vol. 14, iss. 11, art. 2994
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-127982
• UDC: 621.352.6
• ISSN on article: 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en14112994
• COBISS.SI-ID: 68712707
• Publication date in RUL: 30.06.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Energies
• Shortened title: Energies
• Publisher: Molecular Diversity Preservation International
• ISSN: 1996-1073
• COBISS.SI-ID: 518046745

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 21.05.2021

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: protonsko izmenjevalna membrana, gorivna celica, napake, diagnoza, elektrokemična impedančna spektoskopija, porazdelitev časa sprostitve, reformirati

Projects

• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders
• Funding programme: Danish Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP)
• Project number: 64018-0118
• Name: COmmercial BReakthrough of Advanced Feuel Cells
• Acronym: COBRA Drive

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: H2020
• Project number: 893919
• Name: Advanced Single Cell tEstiNg and Development of HT PEMFCs
• Acronym: ASCEND