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Durability Studies of PBI‐based High Temperature PEMFCs
Author(s) -
Yu S.,
Xiao L.,
Benicewicz B. C.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
fuel cells
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.485
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1615-6854
pISSN - 1615-6846
DOI - 10.1002/fuce.200800024
Subject(s) - durability , proton exchange membrane fuel cell , electrolyte , phosphoric acid , membrane , materials science , degradation (telecommunications) , membrane electrode assembly , fuel cells , operating temperature , chemical engineering , steady state (chemistry) , polymer , electrode , chemistry , composite material , electrical engineering , organic chemistry , biochemistry , engineering , metallurgy
Long‐term durability testing of polybenzimidazole (PBI)‐based polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells was performed using test protocols designed to simulate fuel cell operational situations which may be found in real applications. The fuel cell voltages and phosphoric acid (PA) loss were carefully monitored over thousands of hours and hundreds of cycles. In the typical operating range for high temperature PEM fuel cells (160 °C), the fuel cell voltage degradation rate was 4.9 μV h –1 for steady‐state operation. The PA loss rates were generally low and indicated that long‐term operation (>10,000 h) was possible without significant performance degradation due to PA loss from the membrane. Dynamic durability tests also showed that the PA loss rate from the membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) depended on cell operating temperature and load conditions. Under all conditions, the PA loss was a relatively small amount of the total PA in the membrane.