Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst

Designing a more efficient and cost effective proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is highly required. This is due to its enormous potentials in portable and transportation applications. The main component that needs to be optimally design to achieve this purpose is the catalyst layer (CL) of...

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Main Author:	Isah, Mustapha
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English
Published:	2016
Subjects:	QC Physics
Online Access:	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79614/1/MustaphaIsahMFS2016.pdf
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spelling	my-utm-ep.796142019-01-28T04:45:40Z Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst 2016-07 Isah, Mustapha QC Physics Designing a more efficient and cost effective proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is highly required. This is due to its enormous potentials in portable and transportation applications. The main component that needs to be optimally design to achieve this purpose is the catalyst layer (CL) of the fuel cell. Recent studies have focused in effective utilization of the precious metal, usually platinum (Pt) which is used as the most effective catalyst so far. Two ways are employed to achieve this. Firstly, is by reducing the Pt mass loading and secondly is reducing the Pt to smaller nanoparticles to get more access surface area for the reacting fuel while at the same time reducing the overall cost of the system. Despite several experimental, complex model and simulation studies, simple ways of studying more effective utilization of the Pt catalyst are still inadquate. As a result, a simple model is developed by combining the effects of Pt catalyst particle size, Pt mass loading and Pt/C ratio in order to determine their influence on PEMFC performance. This was done by modeling the CL in the low current density of the fuel cell polarization curve only using the well known Butler-Volmer kinetics. The influence of nanoparticles of diameters between 1.5 nm to 6.5 nm, Pt mass loadings (0.4 mgPt/cm2, 0.35 mgPt/cm2, 0.05 mgPt/cm2 and 0.03 mgPt/cm2) and Pt/C ratio are examined. It is observed that the reduction in particle size increased the PEMFC performance. Furthermore, reduction of Pt mass loading increased the performance to certain limit of around 0.03 mgPt/cm2 loading. Supporting the Pt on carbon helped to reduce the amount of Pt used while improving fuel cell performance. The results are compared with other experiment and model findings. An important feature of this simple model suggests that it can be used to evaluate PEMFC performance without performing highly complex model calculations. 2016-07 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79614/ http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79614/1/MustaphaIsahMFS2016.pdf application/pdf en public http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:105815 masters Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Science Faculty of Science
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
language	English
topic	QC Physics
spellingShingle	QC Physics Isah, Mustapha Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
description	Designing a more efficient and cost effective proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is highly required. This is due to its enormous potentials in portable and transportation applications. The main component that needs to be optimally design to achieve this purpose is the catalyst layer (CL) of the fuel cell. Recent studies have focused in effective utilization of the precious metal, usually platinum (Pt) which is used as the most effective catalyst so far. Two ways are employed to achieve this. Firstly, is by reducing the Pt mass loading and secondly is reducing the Pt to smaller nanoparticles to get more access surface area for the reacting fuel while at the same time reducing the overall cost of the system. Despite several experimental, complex model and simulation studies, simple ways of studying more effective utilization of the Pt catalyst are still inadquate. As a result, a simple model is developed by combining the effects of Pt catalyst particle size, Pt mass loading and Pt/C ratio in order to determine their influence on PEMFC performance. This was done by modeling the CL in the low current density of the fuel cell polarization curve only using the well known Butler-Volmer kinetics. The influence of nanoparticles of diameters between 1.5 nm to 6.5 nm, Pt mass loadings (0.4 mgPt/cm2, 0.35 mgPt/cm2, 0.05 mgPt/cm2 and 0.03 mgPt/cm2) and Pt/C ratio are examined. It is observed that the reduction in particle size increased the PEMFC performance. Furthermore, reduction of Pt mass loading increased the performance to certain limit of around 0.03 mgPt/cm2 loading. Supporting the Pt on carbon helped to reduce the amount of Pt used while improving fuel cell performance. The results are compared with other experiment and model findings. An important feature of this simple model suggests that it can be used to evaluate PEMFC performance without performing highly complex model calculations.
format	Thesis
qualification_level	Master's degree
author	Isah, Mustapha
author_facet	Isah, Mustapha
author_sort	Isah, Mustapha
title	Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
title_short	Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
title_full	Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
title_fullStr	Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
title_full_unstemmed	Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
title_sort	model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Faculty of Science
granting_department	Faculty of Science
publishDate	2016
url	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79614/1/MustaphaIsahMFS2016.pdf
_version_	1747818268256632832

Model evaluation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance utilizing platinum catalyst

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