Abstract
The proton exchange membrane fuel cells are the promising sustainable energy sources. The present study focuses on the enhancement the fuel cell performance and the protection of the stainless steel bipolar plate from the corrosion using polyaniline/Zn-Porphyrin composites coatings. The electrochemical properties (polarization and impedance) of the coated 303 stainless steel in 1.0 M H2SO4 solution have been evaluated. The coated 303 stainless steel by new composites exhibits the excellent anti-corrosion activity towards corrosive fuel cell electrolyte. The polyaniline/Zn-Porphyrin composite gives an excellent performance by adding 1.0% of Zn-Porphyrin. This composite improves the output power of the fuel cell.
Highlights
The proton exchange membrane fuel cells are the promising sustainable energy sources
To maximize the efficiency of PANI, the combination of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with PANI was developed by many researchers[15]
The same experiments were applied for coated 303SS by neat PANI and PANI/Zn-Pr composites
Summary
Blocking these pores can result in effectively hindering the corrosion of bipolar plates In this respect, the dispersion of Zn-Pr particles in the texture of PANI coating leads to low electrolyte permeability of the PANI/Zn-Pr composites compared to neat PANI coating (see Table 2). We noted that the Nyquist plots for coated samples by the neat PANI and PANI/ Zn-Pr composites were changed to one capacitive loop (at high frequencies) and straight line (at low frequencies) (Fig. 5)[27] This line is due to diffusion impedance of the coating barrier layer (Zd)[28]. The supreme power density for single PEMFC cell using uncoated 303SS bipolar plates is 435 mW cm−2 (Fig. 8(b)) This value was increased to 720 and 1353 mW cm−2 in the case of neat PANI and PANI/Zn-Pr composite, respectively. The conducting characterization of Zn-Pr molecules is due to the aromaticity of the macrocycle, leading to the electrons mobility though the PANI/Zn-Pr composite[41,42]
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