Alkaline fuel cells lifetime

The Alkaline Fuel Cell, AFC, is the most efficient low-temperature fuel cell presently available with a very high power density, therefore ideally appropriate for mobile applications. The AFC shows a similar performance as the PEFC, but with a much more demanding process control which is complicated because of the requirements of fuel purity (no CO2) and of the corrosive liquid electrolyte. Efficiencies of more than 60 % have been achieved with clean hydrogen and oxygen and noble electrode materials. The AFC was demonstrated to also work with a hydrogen-air system, in a 1 kW stack in Japan and in a 6 kW Russian system with more than 5(XX) h lifetime [34]. PEFC and AFC may play a... 

Recently, some progress in the preparation of anion exchange membranes was reported, leading to the application of the PEFC concept to alkaline fuel cells. However, performance in terms of power output and stabUity/lifetime is far below... 

The lifetime test of direct alcohol and sodium borohydride alkaline fuel cell was conducted and the results pertaining to this is shown in Fig. 30. The useful operating lifetime of 380, 400, 510 h was found for methanol, ethanol and sodium borohydride fuels, respectively. The deterioration of performance of fuel cell may be because of the carbonate precipitate, oxide layer formation and adsorbed intermediate species on catalyst surface. The used up electrodes could be regenerated by treating the electrode with hydrochloric acid. The acid treatment might have removed the carbonates and other species from the electrode. The treated electrodes could regain more than 80% of the catalytic activity. The maximum power density with 2 M fuel and 3 M KOH obtained was 21.5 mW cm at 33 mA cm of current density for sodium borohydride at 60°C, whereas, methanol and ethanol produce 15 and 16 mW cm" of maximum power... 

Lanthanum chromite has provided long lifetimes, as long as 69,000 h in Siemens Westinghouse tubular cells, at 900-1000°C. However, metallic interconnects have not yet shown equivalent lifetime performance. Improvements in metallic interconnect compositions and contact layers between cells/interconnects are still issues for materials development. In particular, the metal/ceramic interface in cells should have low corrosion, low contact resistance and low permeability of chromium species. Recent results have shown that optimised steels for SOFC applications are available and alkaline earth-free and cobalt-containing perovskites are the most suitable materials for contact layers however, their long-term performance under fuel cell operation conditions needs to be proven. 

---