Platinum Supported on Carbon Nanofibre for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

摘要

Platinum supported on Vulcan XC- 72 is the most commonly used catalyst used for the fabrication of fuel cell electrodes. The performance of fuel cell electrode depends on the characteristics of the catalyst support material. This paper deals with the use of carbon nanofibre as platinum catalyst support. Very little work has been reported in the literature on the use of platinum supported on carbon nanofibre for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) application. Purification of carbon nanofibre requires an elaborate procedure. Attempt has been made to use carbon nanofibre without purification, to make the process simple. This paper describes the preparation of carbon nanofibre by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, preparation of platinum supported on carbon fibre, fabrication of the fuel cell electrode using the above catalyst, and fuel cell performance obtained using platinum on carbon nanofibre. The performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell using carbon nanofibre supported Pt cathode catalyst was found to be comparable with that using commercial catalyst, Pt supported on Vulcan XC-72. The performance of the electrodes using platinum supported on carbon nanofibre without purification was found to be comparable to that prepared using purified carbon nanofibre. Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) studies carried out to evaluate the platinum catalyst utilization and Scanning electron microscope (SEM) studies carried out to find the extent of dispersion of platinum on carbon nanofibre are also presented in this paper.