Diagnostic Tools to Identify Catalyst Degradation During Fuel Cell Operation Electrochemical Methods

1 Diagnostic Tools to Identify Catalyst Degradation During Fuel Cell Operation Electrochemical Methods 

A fuel cell is a typical electrochemical device. Thus, the electrochemical analysis methods developed for other electrochemical devices can be directly used or modified for diagnosis of fuel cell degradation, including catalyst layer degradation. Cyclic voltammetry and polarization curve analysis are very frequently used in failure analysis and degradation diagnosis. 

1 Cyclic Voltammetry for Fuel Cell Electrode Analysis 

Cyclic voltammetry (CV) is perhaps the most versatile electroanalytical technique for the study of electroactive species. CV is usually used to characterize electrochemical reactions and electrode surface absorption, and has become increasingly popular in all fields of chemistry as a means of studying redox reaction rates in a wide potential range. CV is also a typical mefliod for the study of reaction mechanisms, as its mathematical description has been developed sufficiently to enable kinetic parameters to be determined. 

The ECA can be calculated from the Coulombic charge of CO stripping using Equation 23.6. Readers are referred to [20] and [15] for more details about the experimental setup. 

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