Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells

Xiong Peng, Devashish Kulkarni, Ying Huang, Travis J. Omasta, Benjamin Ng, Yiwei Zheng, Lianqin Wang, Jacob M. LaManna, Daniel S. Hussey, John R. Varcoe, Iryna V. Zenyuk and William E. Mustain ()
Additional contact information
Xiong Peng: University of South Carolina
Devashish Kulkarni: University of California Irvine
Ying Huang: University of California Irvine
Travis J. Omasta: University of South Carolina
Benjamin Ng: University of South Carolina
Yiwei Zheng: University of South Carolina
Lianqin Wang: University of Surrey
Jacob M. LaManna: National Institute for Standards and Technology
Daniel S. Hussey: National Institute for Standards and Technology
John R. Varcoe: University of Surrey
Iryna V. Zenyuk: University of California Irvine
William E. Mustain: University of South Carolina

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract There is a need to understand the water dynamics of alkaline membrane fuel cells under various operating conditions to create electrodes that enable high performance and stable, long-term operation. Here we show, via operando neutron imaging and operando micro X-ray computed tomography, visualizations of the spatial and temporal distribution of liquid water in operating cells. We provide direct evidence for liquid water accumulation at the anode, which causes severe ionomer swelling and performance loss, as well as cell dryout from undesirably low water content in the cathode. We observe that the operating conditions leading to the highest power density during polarization are not generally the conditions that allow for long-term stable operation. This observation leads to new catalyst layer designs and gas diffusion layers. This study reports alkaline membrane fuel cells that can be operated continuously for over 1000 h at 600 mA cm−2 with voltage decay rate of only 32-μV h−1 – the best-reported durability to date.

Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17370-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-17370-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17370-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().