Estudio del comportamiento de stacks de tipo PEM con distintas configuraciones

Laburpena

Currently, it is widely accepted that CO2 emissions have to besubstantially reduced in order to tackle climate change. Electro-mobility is a general term for the development of electric-powered vehicles and it has the potential to make transport more efficient. In this context, hydrogen and fuel cells can play a major role in the energy transformation process. This technology seems to be the most suitable for transportation applications, thanks to the highpower density and the low operating temperature [1]. The MEA (membrane electrode assembly) is the key component of the fuel cell and contains the membrane sandwiched between both the anode and cathode catalysts. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stacks are conventionally made by assembling a large numbers of cells together connected electrically in series.The number of cells and the area of the electrodes determine the capacity of such a stack [2]. The goal of this work was to prepare MEAs containing amorphous electrocatalysts with low platinum loading for the anode (Ni59Nb40Pt0.6Fe0.4) and toapply them to stacks. The number of cells connected in series was changed (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 cell-stacks) and polarization and power curves were recorded to evaluate the stack performance. The initial results show that in general, a higher amount of cells leads to higher maximum power values, although an increase inthe resistance of the system is observed.