Status and Recent Progress in Fuel Cell Development at MingDao University in Taiwan

摘要

Hydrogen can be easily produced from a wide variety of domestic resources using a number of different technologies. Fuel cells possess the chemical energy of hydrogen to generate electricity without combustion or pollution. Hydrogen and fuel cell R&D efforts at MingDao University in Taiwan are focused on hydrogen production and delivery, hydrogen storage, installation and integration of fuel cell systems. The mission of the MingDao University in hydrogen and fuel cell R&D is to facilitate and accelerate the development and deployment of fuel cell technology and fuel cell systems, and to educate and develop resources in the fuel cell community. Recent progress in Hydrogen and fuel cell R&D includes: (1) PEMFC electrodes which were designed with different structure of Pt-Ru electro-catalyst layers on the gas diffusion electrode by plasma deposition processes; (2) The improvement on the CO tolerance and utilization efficiency of catalyst through multi-electrocatalyst layer structure synthesized by innovative directed-printing and magnetron sputter deposition techniques; and (3) Integrated design of a fuel cell transportation vehicle. A MHV (MingDao Hydrogen Vehicle) vehicle, which is the first prototype of fuel cell car in Taiwan, has been developed to reveal the significant progress in hydrogen energy technologies. The fuel cell system has an efficiency of over 30% at the power consumption for vehicle cruise, which is higher than that of a typical internal combustion engine.