Developing Alkaline Anion Exchanging Membrane Fuel Cells

摘要

To achieve sustainable development with limited natural resources and environmental concerns, fuel cells are expected to play an important role in providing clean power at high efficiency. After past decades of intensive development, the proton conducting polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have made substantial advancement in cost, performance and stability. As the results, some real commercial applications have been demonstrated around the world, such as in the combined heat and power generations, vehicle powers, stationary backup powers, and portable powers. Still, the high cost, scarceness and performance stability of the highly dispersed platinum catalysts in the strong acid environment under dynamic fuel cell operation conditions remain as the major challenges for the PEMFCs to reach widespread mass applications. To address these difficulties, alternative approach in developing alkaline anion exchanging membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) has recently gained momentum. In this presentation, we report our efforts in developing AEMFCs at Army Research Laboratory. It covers our non-precious metal catalysts development, alkaline polymer electrolyte membrane characterization, fuel cell electrode optimization, and fuel cell tests. The results of this study illustrate some of the key factors affecting the current AEMFCs performance, and the remaining challenges.