Prediction of degradation in performance of cathode catalyst layer during load cycling

Degradation of Fuel Cell (FC) components under dynamic loads is one of the biggest bottlenecks in FC commercialization. A novel experimental based model is presented to predict the Catalyst Layer (CL) performance loss under a given cyclic load. It consists of two sub-models: Model 1 computes CL Electro-Chemical Surface Area (ECSA) under an N-cyclic load with aid of an analogy with fatigue phenomena of carbon steel by using some correction factors. Ostwald ripening of agglomerate particles in the CL is also modeled. Model 1 validation shows good agreements between its outputs and a large number of experiments with maximum 7% error. Model 2 is an already-completed task in an earlier study which uses the agglomerate model to calculate the CL performance for a given ECSA. Combination of Models 1 & 2 predicts the CL performance under a dynamic load. A set of parametric studies was performed to investigate the effects of operating parameters on the Voltage Degradation Rate (VDR). The results show that temperature is the most influential parameter; that an increase from 60oC to 80oC leads to 20.26% VDR increase, and pressure is the least effective one; that an increase from 2atm to 4atm leads to 1.41% VDR rise.