Experimental investigation of CO tolerance in high temperature PEM fuel cells

Abstract

In the present work, the effect of operating a high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) with different reactant gases has been investigated throughout performance tests. Also, the effects of temperature on the performance of a HT-PEMFC were analyzed at varying temperatures, ranging from 140 degrees C to 200 degrees C. Increasing the operating temperature of the cell increases the performance of the HT-PEMFC. The optimum operating temperature was determined to be 160 degrees C due to the deformations occurring in the cell components at high working temperatures. To investigate the effects of CO on the performance of HT-PEMFC, the CO concentration ranged from 1 to 5 vol %. The current density at 0.6 V decreases from 0.33 A/cm(2) for H-2 to 0.31 A/cm(2) for H-2 containing 1 vol % CO, to 0.29 A/cm(2) for 3 vol % CO, and 0.25 A/cm(2) for 5 vol % CO, respectively. The experimental results show that the presence of 25 vol % CO2 or N-2 has only a dilution effect and therefore, there is a minor impact on the HT-PEMFC performance. However, the addition of CO to H-2/N-2 or H-2/CO2 mixtures increased the performance loss. After longterm performance test for 500 h, the observed voltage drop at constant current density was obtained as similar to 14.8% for H-2/CO2/CO (75/22/3) mixture. The overall results suggest that the anode side gas mixture with up to 5 vol % CO can be supplied to the HT-PEMFC stack directly from the reformer. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.