Status of Fuel Cells and the Challenges Facing Fuel Cell Technology Today

摘要

The Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Program supports research and development that has substantially improved the state-of-the-art in fuel cell technology, especially with regard to the major technical hurdles to fuel cell commercialization - durability, performance, and cost of fuel cell components and systems. In particular, membrane and catalyst structure and composition have been found to be critical in obtaining improved performance and durability. For example, advancements in alloy catalysts, novel catalyst supports, and mechanically-stabilized membranes have led to single-cell membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) with platinum metal group loadings approaching the DOE 2015 MEA target that have a lifetime of 7,300 hours under voltage cycling, showing the potential to meet the DOE 2010 automotive fuel cell stack target of 5,000 hours (equivalent to 150,000 miles). In addition, improvements in the performance of alloy catalysts and membranes have helped improve overall performance and reduce the modeled cost of an 80-kW direct hydrogen fuel cell system for transportation projected to a volume of 500,000 units per year to $73/kW. While component research enabled such advances, innovation in characterization and analysis techniques has improved researchers' understanding of the processes that affect fuel cell performance and durability. An improved understanding of these processes will be key to making further progress in eliminating cost, durability, and performance challenges that remain for fuel cell technology.