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

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, visualizatio...

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Autores principales: Peng, Xiong, Kulkarni, Devashish, Huang, Ying, Omasta, Travis J., Ng, Benjamin, Zheng, Yiwei, Wang, Lianqin, LaManna, Jacob M., Hussey, Daniel S., Varcoe, John R., Zenyuk, Iryna V., Mustain, William E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366663/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32678101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17370-7
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author Peng, Xiong
Kulkarni, Devashish
Huang, Ying
Omasta, Travis J.
Ng, Benjamin
Zheng, Yiwei
Wang, Lianqin
LaManna, Jacob M.
Hussey, Daniel S.
Varcoe, John R.
Zenyuk, Iryna V.
Mustain, William E.
author_facet Peng, Xiong
Kulkarni, Devashish
Huang, Ying
Omasta, Travis J.
Ng, Benjamin
Zheng, Yiwei
Wang, Lianqin
LaManna, Jacob M.
Hussey, Daniel S.
Varcoe, John R.
Zenyuk, Iryna V.
Mustain, William E.
author_sort Peng, Xiong
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-73666632020-07-21 Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells Peng, Xiong Kulkarni, Devashish Huang, Ying Omasta, Travis J. Ng, Benjamin Zheng, Yiwei Wang, Lianqin LaManna, Jacob M. Hussey, Daniel S. Varcoe, John R. Zenyuk, Iryna V. Mustain, William E. Nat Commun Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-07-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7366663/ /pubmed/32678101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17370-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Peng, Xiong
Kulkarni, Devashish
Huang, Ying
Omasta, Travis J.
Ng, Benjamin
Zheng, Yiwei
Wang, Lianqin
LaManna, Jacob M.
Hussey, Daniel S.
Varcoe, John R.
Zenyuk, Iryna V.
Mustain, William E.
Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title_full Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title_fullStr Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title_full_unstemmed Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title_short Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
title_sort using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366663/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32678101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17370-7
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