Development of Catalyst and Gas Diffusing MEA Layers for PEFC using Taguchi's Method

Abstract

Taguchi's method was applied to an MEA design, and identified the robust design conditions. The generic function was defined as the relationship between the fuel gas flow rate and the electric power. The four kinds of control factors for the catalyst layer formation and eight control factors for the geometrical and process parameters of gas diffusing layer (GDL) were selected to optimize the MEA design conditions. These parameters were allocated in the orthogonal arrays of L9 (for the catalyst layer) and L18 (for GDLs) based on the design of experiment (DOE). The robustness and performance were identified of MEA using the indexes called S/N ratio and sensitivity. The variability of the power operated at a large gas flow rate was diminished (within 20%), and the time required for optimum designing was also reduced.