PEM Fuel Cell Degradation

The durability of PEM fuel cells is a major barrier to the commercialization of these systems for stationary and transportation power applications. While significant progress has been made in understanding degradation mechanisms and improving materials, further improvements in durability are required to meet commercialization targets. Catalyst and electrode durability remains a primary degradation mode, with much work reported on understanding how the catalyst and electrode structure degrades. Accelerated Stress Tests (ASTs) are used to rapidly evaluate component degradation, however the results are sometimes easy, and other times difficult to correlate. Tests that were developed to accelerate degradation of single components are shown to also affect other component's degradation modes. Non-ideal examples of this include ASTs examining catalyst degradation performances losses due to catalyst degradation do not always well correlate with catalyst surface area and also lead to losses in mass transport.