Carbon Corrosion in PEM Fuel Cells and the Development of Accelerated Stress Tests

Carbon corrosion is an important degradation mechanism that can impair PEMFC performance through the destruction of catalyst connectivity,collapseoftheelectrodeporestructure,lossofhydrophobiccharacter,andanincreaseofthecatalystparticlesize.Inthisstudy,carboncorrosionwasquantifiedinsitubymeasurementofcarbondioxideinthefuelcellexhaustgasesthroughnon-dispersiveinfraredspectroscopyduringsimulateddrivecycleoperationsconsistingofpotentialcyclingwithvaryingupperandlowerpotentiallimits.Thesestudieswereconductedforthreedifferenttypesofcarbonsupports.Areductioninthecatalystlayerthicknesswasobservedduringasimulateddrivecycleoperationwithaconcomitantdecreaseincatalystlayerporosity,whichledtoperformancelossesduetoincreasedmasstransportlimitations.Theobservedthicknessreductionwasprimarilyduetocompactionofthecatalystlayer,withtheactualmassofcarbonoxidation(loss)contributingonlyasmallfraction( < 20%). The dynamics of carbon corrosion are presented along with a model that simulates the transient and dynamic corrosion rates observed in our experiments. Accelerated carbon corrosion stress tests are presented and their effects are compared to those observed for the drive cycle test. © The results presented here evaluate the oxidation behavior of three different types of carbon black supports under potential transients simulating a transportation drive cycle in a PEMFC environment. The carbon corrosion was quantified by monitoring the evolution of CO and CO 2 at the cathode cell outlet coupled with extensive post-mortem microscopy characterization of the cathode catalyst layer (CCL) structure. We distinguished the potential regimes relevant for carbon corro- sion using non-dispersive infrared spectroscopy (NDIR). To complete the study, steady-state and transient mechanistic models were devel- oped, using the rate constants extracted from the NDIR experiments, to simulate carbon corrosion under drive cycle conditions. Finally, the two different U.S. DRIVE recommended carbon corrosion ASTs were applied to membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) incorporating the various carbon supports in the CCLs while monitoring the exhaust with NDIR for a quantitative comparison of their respective effects on the resulting catalyst layer structure.

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