Polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is a leading candidate for the development of a sustainable hydrogen infrastructure. The heart of a PEMWE cell is represented by the membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which consists of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) with catalyst layers (CLs), flow fields, and bipolar plates (BPPs). The weakest component of the system is the PEM, as it is prone to chemical and mechanical degradation. Membrane chemical degradation is associated with the formation of hydrogen peroxide due to the crossover of product gases (H2 and O2). In this paper, membrane failure due to H2 crossover was addressed in a membrane-focused accelerated stress test (AST). Asymmetric H2O and gas supply were applied to a test cell in OCV mode at two temperatures (60 °C and 80 °C). Electrochemical characterization at the beginning and at the end of testing revealed a 1.6-fold higher increase in the high-frequency resistance (HFR) at 80 °C. The hydrogen crossover was measured with a micro-GC, and the fluoride emission rate (FER) was monitored during the ASTs. A direct correlation between the FER and H2 crossover was identified, and accelerated membrane degradation at higher temperatures was detected.

A new method for measuring membrane degradation in polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) is proposed. The method is based on the detection of fluoride ions in effluent water from the cathode- and anode outlet of the PEFC using photometry (PM). The fluoride emission rate (FER) is an indicator of the membrane’s state of health (SoH) and can be used to measure the chemical membrane degradation. Commercial catalyst-coated membranes (CCMs) have been tested at 80 °C and 90 °C at 30% relative humidity (RH) to investigate the reliability of the developed method for fuel cell effluent samples. To verify the measurement, a mean-difference plot was created by measuring the same data with a fluorine selective electrode. The average difference was at ±0.13 nmol h−1 cm−2, which indicates good agreement between the two methods. These new findings imply that PM is a promising method for quick and simple assessment of membrane degradation in PEM technology.

Fuel starvation is a major cause of anode corrosion in low temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The fuel cell start-up is a critical step, as hydrogen may not yet be evenly distributed in the active area, leading to local starvation. The present work investigates the hydrogen distribution and risk for starvation during start-up and after nitrogen purge by extending an existing computational fluid dynamic model to capture transient behavior. The results of the numerical model are compared with detailed experimental analysis on a 25 cm2 triple serpentine flow field with good agreement in all aspects and a required time step size of 1 s. This is two to three orders of magnitude larger than the time steps used by other works, resulting in reasonably quick calculation times (e.g., 3 min calculation time for 1 s of experimental testing time using a 2 million element mesh).