• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제59권1호
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• pp.49-53
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• 2021

The Fenton reaction is often used to evaluate the chemical durability of polymer membranes of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC). However, due to the violent reaction between hydrogen peroxide and iron ions, it is difficult to compare experimental data because of low reproducibility. In this study, we tried to find the reaction conditions to improve the reproducibility of the durability test of the membrane by the Fenton reaction. The hydrogen peroxide concentration was fixed at 30%, the iron ion concentration, temperature, stirring speed, and sample size were varied, and the fluorine ion concentration of the Nafion polymer membrane deteriorated by radicals was measured. When the iron ion concentration was increased or the membrane sample size was increased, and the reaction temperature was increased to 80 ℃, the experimental deviation increased, so an iron ion concentration of 10 ppm, a temperature of 70 ℃, and a sample size of 0.5 ㎠ were suitable.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제60권1호
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• pp.20-24
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• 2022

In the process of long-term use of PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells), chemical degradation of membrane electrode assembly (MEA) occurs due to corrosion of stack elements and contamination of supply gas. In this study, we investigated whether chemically degraded MEA can be recovered by acid washing. The performance was measured and compared in a PEMFC cell after contamination with iron ions and washing with an aqueous sulfuric acid solution. The performance was reduced by about 25% by 0.5 ppm iron ion contamination, and 97.1% performance recovery was possible by washing of 0.15 M sulfuric acid. The membrane resistance was increased due to iron ion contamination of the polymer membrane, and the ionic conductivity was restored by washing the iron ions from the membrane while minimizing the loss of the electrode catalyst by washing with a low-concentration sulfuric acid aqueous solution. The possibility of solving the decrease in durability caused by chemical contamination of PEMFC MEA by the acid washing was confirmed.

• Membrane Journal
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.279-304
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• 2023

Polybenzimidazole (PBI) based membranes have evolved in literature as a popular membrane material for various applications in the past two decades because of their high temperature thermal durability, strong mechanical and tensile properties, high glass transition temperature (T_g), ion conduction ability at elevated temperature (up to 200℃), oxidative or chemical durability along with robust network like structural rigidity, which make PBI membranes suitable for various potential applications in chemically challenging environments. Ion conducting PBI based membranes have been extensively utilized in high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFC). In addition, PBI based membranes have been vastly utilized for the development of gas separation membranes and organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membranes for their unique characteristics. This review will cover the recent progress and application of various types of flat sheet PBI based membranes for HT-PEMFC, gas separation and OSN application.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제54권5호
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• pp.587-592
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• 2016

Sodium borohydride, $NaBH_4$, shows a number of advantages as hydrogen source for portable proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Properties of $NaBH_4$ hydrolysis reaction using unsupported Co-P-B Co-B, catalyst at high concentration $NaBH_4$ solution were studied. In order to enhance the hydrogen generation yield at high concentration of $NaBH_4$, the effect of catalyst type, $NaBH_4$ concentration and recovery of condensing water on the hydrogen yield were measured. The yield of hydrogen evolution increased as the boron ratio increased in preparation process of Co-P-B catalyst. The hydrogen yield decreased as the concentration increased from 20 wt% to 25 wt% in $NaBH_4$ solution during hydrolysis reaction using 1:5 Co-P-B catalyst. Maximum hydrogen yield of 96.4% obtained by recovery of condensing water and thinning of catalyst pack thickness in reactor using Co-P-B with Co-B catalyst and 25 wt% $NaBH_4$ solution.

• Macromolecular Research
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• 제17권5호
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• pp.325-331
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• 2009

The synthesis and the characterization of crosslinked ABC triblock copolymer, i.e. polystyrene-b-poly (hydroxyethyl methacrylate)-b-poly(styrene sulfonic acid), (PS-b-PHEMA-b-PSSA) is reported. PS-b-PHEMA-b-PSSA triblock copolymer at 20:10:70 wt% was sequentially synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The middle block was crosslinked by sulfosuccinic acid (SA) via the esterification reaction between -OH of PHEMA and -COOH of SA, as demonstrated by FTIR spectroscopy. As increasing amounts of SA, ion exchange capacity (IEC) continuously increased from 2.13 to 2.82 meq/g but water uptake decreased from 181.8 to 82.7%, resulting from the competitive effect between crosslinked structure and the increasing concentration of sulfonic acid group. A maximum proton conductivity of crosslinked triblock copolymer membrane at room temperature reached up to 0.198 S/cm at 3.8 w% of SA, which was more than two-fold higher than that of Nafion 117(0.08 S/cm). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis clearly showed that the PS-b-PHEMA-b-PSSA triblock copolymer is microphase-separated with a nanometer range and well developed to provide the connectivity of ionic PSSA domains. The membranes exhibited the good thermal properties up to $250^{\circ}C$ presumably resulting from the microphase-separated and crosslinked structure of the membranes, as revealed by thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA).

• Macromolecular Research
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.314-320
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• 2005

Crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) membranes were prepared at various crosslinking temperatures using poly(acrylic acid-co-maleic acid) (PAM) containing different PAM contents. The thermal properties of these PVA/PAM membranes prepared at various reaction temperatures were characterized using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The proton conductivity and methanol permeability of PVA/PAM membranes were then investigated as PAM content was varied from 3 to 13 wt%. It was found that the proton and methanol transport were dependent on PAM content in their function both as crosslinking agent and as donor of hydrophilic -COOH groups. Both these properties decreased monotonously with increasing PAM concentration. The proton conductivities of these PVA/PAM membranes were in the range from $10^{-3}\;to\;10^{-2}S/cm$ and the methanol permeabilities from $10^{-7}\;to\;10^{-6}cm^{2}/sec$. In addition, the effect of operating temperature up to $80^{\circ}C$ on ion conductivity was examined for three selected membranes: 7, 9 and 11 wt% PAM membranes. Ion conductivity increased with increasing operating temperature and showed and S/cm at $80^{\circ}C$, respectively. The effects of crosslinking and ionomer group concentration were also examined in terms of water content, ion exchange capacity (IEC), and fixed ion concentration. In addition, the number of water molecules per ionomer site was calculated using both water contents and IEC values. With overall consideration for all the properties measured in this study, $7{\sim}9\;wt%$ PAM membrane prepared at $140^{\circ}C$ exhibited the best performance. These characteristics of PVA/PAM membranes are desirable in applications related to the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC).

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제54권1호
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• pp.6-10
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• 2016

Until a recent day, degradation of PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells) has been mainly studied in unit cell. But operation and degradation of real PEMFC going along in stack instead of unit cell. Therefore in this work, ADT (Accelerated Degradation Test) of PEMFC was done in stack and the result from stack's test was compared with that of unit cell. The polymer electrolyte membrane was degraded by repeated electrochemical and mechanical degradation method among several ADT methods. Current densities of MEA at 0.6V decreased in stack and unit cell, 28.4% and 27.8% respectively after ADT for 312 hours. Hydrogen crossover current densities of membrane increased in stack and unit cell, 16.8% and 15.2% respectively after ADT for 312 hours. The result of ADT in stack was similar that of ADT in unit cell, which showed that ADT method of unit cell was available to the stack.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 한국진공학회 2013년도 제44회 동계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.598-598
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• 2013

The short lifetime of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is the one of the main problems to be solved for commercializing. Especially, the weak adhesion between metal nanoparticles and supports deteriorate the performances of nanocatalysts, therefore, it is considered to be a major failure mechanism. Using force-distance spectroscopy of atomic force microscopy (AFM), we characterized the adhesion between Pt nanoparticles and carbon supports that is crucially related to the durability for membrane fuel cell (MFC) electrode. In our study, force distance curves measured with Pt coated AFM cantilever, mimicking the behavior of corresponding nanoparticles on carbon supports, leads to the adhesion between metal nanoparticles and carbon supports. We found that theadhesion between Pt and HNO3-treated carbon is enhanced by a factor of 4, compared to Pt and bare carbon support, that is consistent with the macroscopic durability test of PEMFC. The higher adhesion between Pt and HNO3-treated carbon can be explained in light of the stronger chemical interaction by C/O functional groups.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• 제33권12호
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• pp.1022-1030
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• 2009

Numerical analysis was carried out to investigate the effect of GDL (Gas diffusion layer) porosity on the performance of PEMFC (proton exchange membrane fuel cell). A complete three-dimensional model was chosen for single straight channel geometry including cooling channel. Main emphasis is placed on the heat and mass transfer through the GDL with different porosity. The present numerical results show that at high current densities, the cell voltage is influenced by the GDL porosity while the cell performance is nearly the same at low current densities. At high current densities, low value of GDL porosity results in decrease of the fuel cell performance since the diffusion of reactant gas through GDL becomes slow with decreasing porosity. On the other hand, for high GDL porosity, the effective thermal conductivity becomes low and the heat generated in the cell is not removed rapidly. This causes the temperature of fuel cell to increase and gives rise to dehydration of the membrane, and ultimately increase of the ohmic loss.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국신재생에너지학회 2007년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.129-132
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• 2007

고분자 전해질 연료전지의 성능에 영향을 주는 많은 인자들 중에서도 촉매층의 조성과 구조의 최적화는 성능변화에 큰 요인으로 작용 된다. 촉매층내 반응 활성점인 삼상계면을 형성시키기 위해 함침하는 Nafion binder를 anode와 cathode의 두 전극에 이온당량(Equivalent weight, EW)이 동일하게 함침시켜 그 성능을 확인하였다. 그 결과를 토대로 anode와 cathode에 이온당량을 각기 다르게 하여 각각의 전극마다 이온당량이 미치는 영향에 대해서도 살펴보았다. Anode와 cathode의 이온당량을 동일하게 EW1100, EW1000, EW900으로 변화 시켜주었을 경우 이온당량의 물성치가 상대적으로 향상된 EW900의 단위 전지 성능이 가장 우수하였으며, 이온당량이 EW900이었을 때 최적의 Nafion binder 함침량은 EW1100의 Nafion binder 함침량과 동일하였다. Anode와 cathode에 함침하는 Nafion binder의 이온당량을 각각 EW1100과 EW900, EW900과 EW1100으로 MEA를 제조하여 전극에 따라 이용당량이 미치는 영향을 살펴보았다.