Studies of Conditioning Protocols for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

For optimal performance, there is a need to condition the fuel cell when it is being used for the first time. This process of conditioning is referred to as initial conditioning, activation or break-in procedure. The goal behind the initial conditioning is to increase the performance of the fuel cell until it gets to its peak value for optimized operation. Although, the exact mechanism. During this conditioning process, the polymer membrane and the polymer in the catalyst layer network are hydrated; contaminants are removed from the catalyst, and the number of catalyst’s active sites increases, and finally, the fuel cells attain an optimized and stable performance at the end of this step. However, the whole process of conditioning is known to be very time consuming, with many state-of-the-art conditioning protocols taking in excess of tens of hours to attain peak performance. Thus, this further increases the operating cost of the PEMFC as considerable amount of gas is expended for this process.In this report, a new conditioning protocol that entails a series of oxidative starving at the cathode is introduced to accelerate the conditioning process. Unlike prior conditioning protocol, this protocol focuses not just on the hydration of the membrane electrode assembly but on reclaiming dried and blocked catalyst sites on the cathode electrode. The performance after conditioning shows that this new protocol gives a 10% and 11% increase in output power in comparison with the standardized United States Department of Energy and European Union conditioning protocol. Also the new conditioning protocol was able to reach its peak performance in 30minutes in comparison to the United States Department of Energy and European Union conditioning protocol that takes over 5 hours and 11 hours respectively.