Enhancement of the fuel cell performance of a high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell running with titanium composite polybenzimidazole-based membranes

摘要

The fuel cell performance of a composite PBI-based membrane with TiO2 has been studied. The behaviour of the membrane has been evaluated by comparison with the fuel cell performance of other PBI-based membranes, all of which were cast from the same polymer with the same molecular weight. The PB1 composite membrane incorporating TiO2 showed the best performance and reached 1000mWcm~2 at 175 °C. Moreover, this new titanium composite PBI-based membrane also showed the best stability during the preliminary long-term test under our operation conditions. Thus, the slope of the increase in the ohmic resistance of the composite membrane was 0.041 mΩ2 cm2 h-1 and this is five times lower than that of the standard PBI membrane. The increased stability was due to the high phosphoric acid retention capacity - as confirmed during leaching tests, in which the Ti-based composite PBI membrane retained 5 mol of H3PO4/PBI r.u. whereas the PBI standard membrane only retained 1 mol H3PO4/PBI r.u. Taking into account the results obtained in this study, the TiO2-PBI based membranes are good candidates as electrolytes for high temperature PEMFCs.