A comparative study of conditioning methods for hydrocarbon‐based proton‐exchange membrane fuel cells for improved performance

Recent advances in developing hydrocarbon-based proton-exchange membrane fuel cells have focused on optimizing materials. Voltage recovery (VR) has shown notable improvements for perfluorosulfonic acid-based cells. This study is the first to present a VR protocol designed specifically The proposed involves 100 voltage steps at 0.08 V and 0.12 V, lasting 20 seconds each, 80 °C, under backpressure oversaturated conditions. effectiveness of was compared other protocols, including one by US Department Energy (DOE) another from literature. Our resulted % increase mass activity fully after only hour, while DOE led no improvement, established required three hours show 70 increase. also effective Nafion CLs. H2/air performance 0.7 increased 21%, resulting current density 0.9 A cm-2, similar reference. suggests that highly significantly reduces conditioning time, which can be significant cost factor. article protected copyright. All rights reserved.