PEMFC

The first PEM stack was employed in Gemini space program. The unit provided the spacecraft with 1 kW power. The most famous apphcations of PEM fuel cells nowadays are the cars and buses from Ballard, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Ford, General Motors, and other motor companies. Ballard also constructed a power plant operating on by-product hydrogen, which provided 10 kW. A 250 kW commercial prototype was commissioned in 1997 and focused on weight reduction. Field trials of this prototype are being carried out around the world today. 

Plug Power installed a 7kW residential power system that provides electricity, heat, and hot water to a house in upstate New York. Residential fuel cells are in essence miniature power plants that provide electrical power efficiently, reliably, and most of all quietly to a house or to a block of houses. One of Plug Power s fuel cells has cleared a milestone of 10,000h and the company has announced the completion of 52 fuel cell systems, 37 of which are operated on natural gas and the other 15 on synthetic fuels. 

A fuel cell stack with internal humidifier has proven to exhibit similar performances as external humidification for PEM fuel eell applications. In an internal 

It was found that the mass transfer behavior of reactants and products of the stack is more complicated compared with a single cell because of the heat exchange, humidity, and reactant supply effects. Some of the produced water was lost by evaporation, while self-humidifying was found to be more efficient at temperatures above 30 °C. Under laboratory conditions, humidification can be lowered if cooling power is improved to compensate for the heat released by the electrode reactions. In applications, however, cooling power is limited and humidification is a necessity. 

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The most promising fuel cell for transportation purposes was initially developed in the 1960s and is called the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Compared with the PAFC, it has much greater power density state-of-the-art PEMFC stacks can produce in excess of 1 kWA. It is also potentially less expensive and, because it uses a thin solid polymer electrolyte sheet, it has relatively few sealing and corrosion issues and no problems associated tvith electrolyte dilution by the product water. 

Since it can operate at ambient temperatures, the PEMFC can startup quickly, but it does have two significant disadvantages lower efficiency and more stringent purity requirements. The lower efficiency... 

This trade-off may not even occur in some cases. Membranes used in the PEMFC have been developed for the chlor-alkali industry and have 40,000-hour durability (shutdowns are prohibitively expensive in stationary applications), require only 5,000-hour durability (corresponding Co 100,000 miles) for automotive applications. Hence, it maybe possible to develop less expensive membranes that still meet automotive requirements. 

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs)... 

Propylene glycol, glycolysis of polyurethanes with, 572 Propylene oxide (PO), glycolysis of polyurethanes with, 572-573 Propylene oxide (PO) polyols, 211, 223 Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), 272-273 Proton NMR integrations, 386. See also H NMR spectroscopy Protonic acids, reactions catalyzed by, 67-68... 

PEMFC proton exchange membrane fuel cell... 

The authors developed a multi-layered microreactor system with a methanol reforma- to supply hydrogen for a small proton exchange membrane fiiel cell (PEMFC) to be used as a power source for portable electronic devices [6]. The microreactor consists of four units (a methanol reformer with catalytic combustor, a carbon monoxide remover, and two vaporizers), and was designed using thermal simulations to establish the rppropriate temperature distribution for each reaction, as shown in Fig. 3. 

PEMFC Electrolyte Synthesis of organic/inorganic hybrid membranes... 

For last few years, extensive studies have been carried out on proton conducting inorganic/organic hybrid membranes prepared by sol-gel process for PEMFC operating with either hydrogen or methanol as a fuel [23]. A major motivation for this intense interest on hybrid membranes is high cost, limitation in cell operation temperature, and methanol cross-... 

Sol-gel techniques have been successfidly applied to form fuel cell components with enhanced microstructures for high-temperature fuel cells. The apphcations were recently extended to synthesis of hybrid electrolyte for PEMFC. Although die results look promising, the sol-gel processing needs further development to deposit micro-structured materials in a selective area such as the triple-phase boundary of a fuel cell. That is, in the case of PEMFC, the sol-gel techniques need to be expanded to form membrane-electrode-assembly with improved microstructures in addition to the synthesis of hybrid membranes to get higher fuel cell performance. 

Development of Highly Compaet PROX System for PEMFC Fuel Processor... 

Principal design parameters of electro-catalysts for PEMFCs... 

Electro-catalysts which have various metal contents have been applied to the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC). For the PEMFCs, Pt based noble metals have been widely used. In case the pure hydrogen is supplied as anode fuel, the platinum only electrocatalysts show the best activity in PEMFC. But the severe activity degradation can occur even by ppm level CO containing fuels, i.e. hydrocarbon reformates[l-3]. To enhance the resistivity to the CO poison of electro-catalysts, various kinds of alloy catalysts have been suggested. Among them, Pt-Ru alloy catalyst has been considered one of the best catalyst in the aspect of CO tolerance[l-3]. 

For the support material of electro-catalysts in PEMFC, Vulcan XC72(Cabot) has been widely used. This carbon black has been successfully employed for the fuel cell applications for its good electric conductivity and high chemical/physical stability. But higher amount of active metals in the electro-catalysts, compared to the general purpose catalysts, make it difficult to control the metal size and the degree of distribution. This is mainly because of the restricted surface area of Vulcan XC72 carbon black. Thus complex and careM processes are necessary to get well dispersed fine active metal particles[4,5]. 

Fig. 1. Performance evaluation of prepared electro-catalysts as an electrode of PEMFC. Cell temperature 70 C, active area 50cm, platinum loading anode(0.3mgPt/cm )/cathode(0.45mg Pt/cm ), fuel utilization H2/O2 = 80%/50%, RH 100% RFl, pressure H2/O2 = 0 psig/0 psig.

Design parameters of the anode catalyst for the polymer electrolyte membrane fiiel cells were investigated in the aspect of active metal size and inter-metal distances. Various kinds of catalysts were prepared by using pretreated Ketjenblacks as support materials. The prepared electro-catalysts have the morphology such as the sizes of active metal are in the range from 2.0 to 2.8nm and the inter-metal distances are 5.0 to 14.2nm. The electro-catalysts were evaluated as an electrode of PEMFC. In Fig. 1, it looked as if there was a correlation between inter-metal distances and cell performance, i.e. the larger inter-metal distances are related to the inferior cell performance. 

Actually, various efforts have been made to develop the compact and efficient microchannel PrOx reactor for portable PEMFC applications. Goerke et al. [2] reported micro PrOx reactor employing stainless steel microchannel foil and Cu/Ce02 catalyst. They showed more than 99% CO conversion at less than 150 C and residence time of 14ms while CO selectivity was about 20%. Chen et al. [3] also developed microchannel reactor made of... 

In this study, we developed microchannel PrOx reactor to control CO outlet concentrations less than 10 ppm from methanol steam reformer for PEMFC applications. The reactor was developed based on our previous studies on methanol steam reformer [5] and the basic technologies on microchaimel reactor including design of microchaimel plate, fabrication process and catalyst coating method were applied to the present PrOx reactor. The fabricated PrOx reactor was tested and evaluated on its CO removal performance. 

For the practical use of this CO removal reactor, the microchannel reactor should be operated carefully to maintain operating temperature ranges because the reaction temperature is critical for the microchannel reactor performance such as CO conversion, selectivity and methanation as disclosed in the above results. It also seems that the present microchannel reactor is promising as a compact and high efficient CO remover for PEMFC systems. 

A microchannel reactor for CO preferential oxidation was developed. The reactor was consisted of microchannel patterned stainless steel plates which were coated by R11/AI2O3 catalyst. The reactor completely removed 1% CO contained in the Ha-rich reformed gas and controlled CO outlet concentration less than Ippm at 130 200°C and 50,000h. However, CH4 was produced from 180"C and CO selectivity was about 50%. For high performance of present PrOx reactor, reaction temperature should be carefully and uniformly controlled to reach high CO conversion and selectivity, and low CH4 production. It seems that the present microchaimel reactor is promising as a CO removal reactor for PEMFC systems. 

A complete methanol reforming system was constructed by coimecting the integrated reformer with a PROX reactor. Fig. 5 shows the evolution of temperature at the gas outlet of the evaporator, reformer and PROX reactor during the start-up. Temperature of the reformer became stable in 5 min after introduction of the reactant. The reformer produced hydrogen up to 1.5L/min with methanol conversion higher than 95%, enough to run a lOOW PEMFC. 

The principle of the fuel cell was first demonstrated by Grove in 1839 [W. R. Grove, Phil. Mag. 14 (1839) 137]. Today, different schemes exist for utilizing hydrogen in electrochemical cells. We explain the two most important, namely the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) and the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC). 

Figure 8.32. PEMFC potential as a function of current density for different CO contents in the hydrogen supply. Note the rapid drop in potential as soon as current is drawn, even for pure hydrogen. This is due to overpotentials in the system, while the monotonic decrease at higher current is attributed to the internal resistance of the PEM. [Adapted from H.F. Oetjen,...

Interestingly, the PEMFC may also operate directly on methanol. Naturally, the problems associated with high coverage of various intermediates will be present, as mentioned above, as well as additional problems such as loss of methanol over the membrane. Nevertheless, it is possible to operate a methanol fuel cell with a voltage around 0.4 V and a reasonable current, to power small mobile devices such as portable computers and cell phones and make them independent of connection to the conventional power net. For more details on fuel cells we refer the reader to L. Carr-ette, K.A. Friedrich and U. Stimming, Fuel Cells 1(1) (2001) 5-39. 

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