PEMFC Contamination - Fundamentals and Outlook

St‐Pierre, Jean; Angelo, Michael; Bethune, Keith; Ge, Junjie; Higgins, Scott R.; Reshetenko, Tatyana V.; Virji, Maheboob B.V.; Zhai, Yunfeng

doi:10.1149/06123.0001ecst

Cited by 11 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…4a showed that exposure to the individual contaminants at 1 A cm -2 actually may have improved fuel cell performance for NO 2 and BZ from a few mV at open circuit to approximately 0.011 V for NO 2 and 0.020 V for BZ at 1.2 A cm -2 . The reasons for the improved performance are not known, though improved performance subsequent to contaminant exposure was observed in other experiments with different contaminants (2,4). The experiments here should be performed again to assess the repeatability of the results.…”

Section: Irrecoverable Performance Lossmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…This is an important consideration for developing PEMFCs for commercial applications because airborne contaminants can arise from many different sources including polluted air, geological emissions, and off-gassing from unstable compounds. Thus, the performance of the fuel cell can be affected in unknown ways depending on the quality of the local air (2). It is therefore important to study the effects of contaminants on performance and durability so that the operational lifetime of the PEMFCs can be maximized to facilitate full-scale commercialization and deployment of these devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The details of the DOE effort have been described in several publications and have been large in scope identifying seven critical airborne contaminants from an initial list of 260 (2)(3)(4). The DOE sponsored research has focused largely on single contaminants and has identified several important mechanisms for each contaminant that contributes to performance loss (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More research is needed to study performance loss and recovery when multiple contaminants are present (11). In this work, the airborne contaminants SO 2 , BZ, and NO 2 were studied in air in single, double, and triple contaminant mixtures at a total concentration of 2 ppm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Common Airborne Impurities and Mixtures on PEMFC Performance and Durability

Angelo

St‐Pierre

2014

ECS Trans.

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The effect of exposing the cathode of hydrogen (H 2 ) proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) to the airborne contaminants: sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), benzene (BZ), and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) on their performance and durability was studied for individual contaminants and mixtures at a total concentration of two parts per million (ppm). The goals were to characterize the effects of contaminant exposure on the: (i) cell performance, (ii) ability of the fuel cell to recover performance using only pure air, (iii) irrecoverable performance loss, and (iv) changes to the durability of the fuel cell as quantified by changes to the electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) of the electrodes. In general, contaminant mixtures decreased performance more than single contaminants. Performance loss was recoverable with pure air when no SO 2 was in the stream and incomplete when it was. Contaminant exposure generally accelerated ECSA loss. IntroductionContaminants present in the air of the oxidant stream of PEMFCs can cause significant performance loss, which can be irreversible in some cases (1). This is an important consideration for developing PEMFCs for commercial applications because airborne contaminants can arise from many different sources including polluted air, geological emissions, and off-gassing from unstable compounds. Thus, the performance of the fuel cell can be affected in unknown ways depending on the quality of the local air (2). It is therefore important to study the effects of contaminants on performance and durability so that the operational lifetime of the PEMFCs can be maximized to facilitate full-scale commercialization and deployment of these devices.The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) is currently researching the performance effects of a number of airborne contaminants and developing strategies to mitigate resulting performance losses through two different projects funded by the United States' Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The details of the DOE effort have been described in several publications and have been large in scope identifying seven critical airborne contaminants from an initial list of 260 (2-4). The DOE sponsored research has focused largely on single contaminants and has identified several important mechanisms for each contaminant that contributes to performance loss ECS Transactions, 64 (3) 773-788 (2014) 773 ) unless CC License in place (see abstract). ecsdl.org/site/terms_use address. Redistribution subject to ECS terms of use (see 131.211.208.19 Downloaded on 2015-03-13 to IPThe work presented here is supported by the ONR as part of their goal to deploy fuel cells under a wide range of operating environments including battlefield conditions and regions outside of the United States, which may have poor air quality. The contaminants studied here are SO 2 , NO 2 , and BZ and are different from those in the DOE project to avoid duplicating efforts. Additionally, this work investigates how contaminant mixtures affect performance and durabili...

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Section: Irrecoverable Performance Lossmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Effect of Common Airborne Impurities and Mixtures on PEMFC Performance and Durability

Angelo

St‐Pierre

2014

ECS Trans.

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“…PEMFCs are expected to be durable but are exposed to a variety of contaminants either present in air and hydrogen or released by fuel cell system materials, which may be deleterious to performance. [1][2][3] Only a small fraction of the large number of likely contaminants have been investigated. For example, only 21 ambient air species from a list of more than 200 candidates were recently studied.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between PEMFC Cathode Kinetic Losses and Contaminants’ Dipole Moment and Adsorption Energy on Pt

St‐Pierre

Zhai

2016

J. Electrochem. Soc.

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A database summarizing the effects of 21 contaminants on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) was used to examine relationships between cathode kinetic losses and contaminant physicochemical parameters. Impedance spectroscopy data were employed to obtain oxygen reduction kinetic resistances by fitting data in the 10−158 Hz range to a simplified equivalent circuit. The contaminant dipole moment and the adsorption energy of the contaminant on a Pt surface were chosen as parameters. Dipole moments did not correlate with dimensionless cathode kinetic resistances. In contrast, adsorption energies were quantitatively and linearly correlated with minimum dimensionless cathode kinetic resistances. Contaminants influence the oxygen reduction for contaminant adsorption energies smaller than −24.5 kJ mol −1 , a value near the high limit of the adsorption energy of O 2 on Pt. Dimensionless cathode kinetic resistances linearly increase with decreasing O 2 adsorption energies below −24.5 kJ mol −1 . Measured total cell voltage losses are mostly larger than the cathode kinetic losses calculated from kinetic resistance changes, which indicates the existence of other sources of performance degradation. Modifications to the experimental procedure are proposed to ensure that data are comparable on a similar basis and improve the correlation between contaminant adsorption energy and kinetic cell voltage PEMFCs are attractive energy conversion devices. However, improvements are still required to meet the strict demands of automotive and other markets. PEMFCs are expected to be durable but are exposed to a variety of contaminants either present in air and hydrogen or released by fuel cell system materials, which may be deleterious to performance. 1-3 Only a small fraction of the large number of likely contaminants have been investigated. For example, only 21 ambient air species from a list of more than 200 candidates were recently studied. 4 Furthermore, fuel cell contamination tests require significant resources and may last several tens or a few hundreds of hours, even if accelerated conditions achieved with higher contaminant concentrations are used. As a result, there is a need to develop a simpler method to predict the impact of contaminants on fuel cell performance.A prediction method for the performance loss associated with contamination has not been suggested for PEMFCs. However, the use of a molecule dipole moment was proposed to correlate the halfwave potential of the oxygen reduction reaction. 5 Only 5 contaminants were considered, and data were obtained with a thin film catalyst layer electrode mounted in a conventional three-electrode cell filled with an aqueous electrolyte maintained at room temperature. These operating conditions are significantly different from the PEMFC environment with a solid electrolyte and the presence of a gas diffusion layer covering the catalyst layer.The PEMFC performance database resulting from separate tests performed with 21 airborne contaminants 4 is reexamined ...

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