Impact of PT loading on proton exchange membrane hydrogen fuel cells performance

With increasing use of renewable energies, such as photovoltaic, wind, biomass, thermosolar, geologic, appeared the challenge of the storage. If it is talking about the mobile devises, it is easy to see that it is necessary store this energy to use it later. In the case of the vehicles the need is obvious to change the oil engine to electric engine, but this happens in all mobile devices. The polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) convert hydrogen and oxygen to electricity. The energy is store as hydrogen gas and the waste is water. Nowadays, there are lots of companies studying the viability of these systems. The future of these batteries pass through the good relation between the performance and the price. A signi cant fraction of the PEMFC cost is focused on the electrodes, exactly in the catalyst used. This catalyst is platinum and it has an important cost comparative with the other parts of the fuel cell [1]. The present thesis studies the e ect of Pt loading in the electrode of proton exchange membrane hydrogen fuel cells (PEMFCs). Gasteiger, Panels and Yan study showed that the anode Pt loading doesn't signi cantly a ect the performance of hydrogen fuel cells [2]. However, in the present study di erent experiments with catalyst-coated membranes (CCM)1 corroborated what it was known before about the cathode loading. But in the case of the anode loading, it was proved that there is an optimum loading which gives the best performance. This results will reduce the costs of the PEMFC at least in the anode side.Outgoin