Improved Performance of Alkaline Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

We have been developing materials for Alkaline membrane fuel cells(AMFCs) for about 10 years. AMFC is one of the polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) which uses anion exchange membrane and anion conductive ionomer as polymer electrolyte materials. AMFC has some advantages over proton-exchange membrane fuel cells(PEMFC) 1-2). (1) The high pH environment of AMFC allows the use of non platinum catalysts. (2) The kinetics of the ORR reaction is more facile in alkaline environment than in acidic environment. AMFC has been attracting worldwide attentions, and the number of report is increasing year by year. We have already demonstrated the relatively high AMFC performances with hydrogen fuel, and have confirmed several features specialized to AMFC, namely CO2 self-purging phenomena3), which could be a solution against serious CO2 problem in AMFC4-6), and the effective water transport from anode to cathode side, which prevent the lack of water needed for cathode reaction7). To make the AMFC being popular FC, there are some issues to be resolved. a) Few low-cost non-Pt or non-precious metal catalysts are known. b) Low power density. c) Low durability of electrolyte materials. The absence of good HOR catalysts with non precious metal is an big issues for the people in this field. But, with the considerable efforts for the development of electrolyte materials, the operating conditions and so on, some researchers have achieved the power density of 1W/cm2 8). Now, we are focusing on the durability of electrolyte materials. The corsslinking between polymer chains is one of an effective way to improve the durability of electrolyte materials. We have investigated some aspects of crosslinking reagents, and have achieved some improvement on the durability of electrolyte materials for AMFC. References H. A. Gasteiger , FC-EXPO 2008, Technical conference fc-10.J. R. Varcoe, R. C. T. Slade, E. Lam How Yee, S. D. Poynton, D. J. Driscoll, D. C. Apperley, Chem. Mater., 19, 2686 (2007)L. A. Adams, S. D. Poynton, C. Tamain, R. C. T. Slade, J. R. Varcoe, ChemSusChem, 1, 79 (2008).H. Yanagi, K. Fukuta, ECS transactions, 16, 257 (2008).K. Fukuta, H. Inoue, S. Watanabe, H. Yanagi, ECS transactions, 1 9, 23 (2009).H. Yanagi, S. Watanabe, K. Sadasue, T. Isomura, H. Inoue, K. Fukuta, of 216th ECS Meeting, #341 (2009).T.Isomura, K.Fukuta, H.Yanagi, S.Ge and C.Y. Wang, of 219th ECS Meeting, #221 (2011).Y. Wang, G. Wang, G. Li, B. Huang, J. Pan, Q.Liu, J. Han, L. xiao, J. Lu, L. Zhuang, Enegy Environ. Sci. 8,177(2015)