Intermediate Temperature PEFC’s with Nafion® 211 Membrane Electrolytes: An Experimental and Numerical Study

Fernihough, Oliver; Ismail, Mohammed S.; El‐kharouf, Ahmad

Abstract

This paper evaluates the performance of Nafion 211 at elevated temperatures up to 120 °C using an experimentally validated model. Increasing the fuel cell operating temperature could have many key benefits at the cell and system levels. However, current research excludes this due to issues with membrane durability. Modelling is used to investigate complex systems to gain further information that is challenging to obtain experimentally. Nafion 211 is shown to have some inter-esting characteristics at elevated temperatures previously unreported, the first of which is that the highest performance reported is at 100 °C and 100% relative humidity. The model was trained on the experimental data and then used to predict the behaviour in the membrane region to understand how the fuel cell performs at varying temperatures and pressures. The model showed that the best membrane performance comes from a 100 °C operating temperature, with much better performance yielded from a higher pressure of 3 bar.

Citation

Fernihough, O., Ismail, M. S., & El‐kharouf, A. (2022). Intermediate Temperature PEFC’s with Nafion® 211 Membrane Electrolytes: An Experimental and Numerical Study. Membranes, 12(4), Article 430. https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12040430

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 7, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 15, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-04
• Deposit Date: Jan 21, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 23, 2023
• Journal: Membranes
• Electronic ISSN: 2077-0375
• Publisher: MDPI
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 430
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12040430
• Keywords: Polymer electrolyte fuel cells; Proton exchange membrane; Fuel cell modelling; Nafion; Intermediate temperature
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4186467