The cost of manufacturing a fuel cell system is largely linked to the production costs and materials used. On one hand, production costs are expected to decrease gradually due to scale of economies, but on the other hand, the cost of rare materials used in the catalyst could increase in the future. Therefore, much attention is being paid to the development of alternative catalysts, of which bimetallic catalysts seem as the most promising. As part of the final thesis, we have presented the functionalities of a previously published thermodynamically consistent proton exchange membrane fuel cell model on bimetallic catalysts. The model was then applied to perform an analysis of the polarisation curves measured on fuel cells with different bimetallic catalysts. The model parameters were calibrated on the given experimental data using the model parameter determination methodologies, which allowed the determination of the intrinsic fuel cell calibration parameters. The latter, due to the thermodynamic basis of the model, coincide with the internal parameters of the fuel cell and directly affect its operation. The model was further enhanced to calculate and graphically display the losses in the fuel cell, which allowed the analysis and comparison of different catalysts. Based on the comparative analyses performed between the individual losses and the values of the calibration parameters, the observed variations between the different types of catalysts were physically evaluated. We found that the operating conditions and the ratio of materials in the catalyst have a noticeable influence on the fuel cell performance and identified the catalyst with the highest operating performance.
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