Upscaling the Production of High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells - an Assessment of Reproducibility, Performance and Durability

A fast and simple method for catalyst layer quality control on large surfaces has been introduced in the electrode production process for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Based on these results, the produced materials have been improved, resulting in the reduction of the frequency of defect occurrence and the improvement of performance, durability and reproducibility of the resulting membrane-electrode-assemblies. The obtained materials have been successfully operated at 0.4 A cm-2 at 160 °C under wet reformate on the anode and compressed air on the cathode for over 750 h, giving 600 mV without any indication of degradation. One MEA was selected for post-mortem investigation by low-energy X-ray imaging. With this method, defects of the electrode were visualized and an indication for phosphoric acid loss identified. Further experiments are planned in order to verify the effect of the observed defects on the fuel cell behaviour.