The Deformation Analysis of H3PO4 Doped PBI Based Membrane Electrode Assemblies
Mert TAŞ Murat ÇELİK Gülşah ELDEN
AbstractThis study aims to investigate the suitability and Abstract— Demand for clean, renewable and safe energy technologies is increasing gradually with increasing energy needs in the world. One of these technologies, fuel cells, attract a great attention due to their high power density and scalability, furthermore they only release water vapour as product. Generating high power density at high temperatures (100°C- 180°C) with phosphoric acid doping, polybenzimidazole (PBI) membrane based proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells have been used for stationary and portable systems. In this study, membrane electrode assemblies (MEA) were fabricated by doping the PBI membrane with different acid doping levels ( 4.53, 4.95, 5.51 H3PO4 / RPU PBI) in the laboratory environment. Each MEA was connected to test cell and run for 24 hours at a temperature ranging from 120°C to 160°C with steps of 10°C and 5% to 20% relative humidity levels with steps of 5%. The effect of phosphoric acid doping, compression pressure, operating temperature and time on deformations in the structure of MEAs by were analysed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It was observed that MEA structure was less brittle as phosphoric acid doping increases