Experimental Investigation on the Adverse Effect of Corrosion in the Current Collectors on the Performance of PEM Fuel Cells

For enhancing the performance of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, copper plates are widely used as the current collectors. The degraded surfaces of the copper plates affect the performance of fuel cells adversely. This work investigates the effects of corrosion in the copper current collector plates on the performance of PEM fuel cells. The experiments were conducted on a single PEM fuel cell with a working area of 25 cm2. To bring out the effect of corrosion, a set of copper plates were allowed to get tarnished by keeping them open to the atmosphere for 2 months. Then, the plates were used as the current collectors in the PEM fuel cell and the performance of the PEM fuel cell was monitored. It was observed that the ohmic losses increased drastically with a maximum voltage drop of 0.4 V. The tarnished surface of copper plates was subsequently polished using emery sheets and the same set of experiments were repeated. It was observed that the performance of the PEM fuel cell decreased to 43.64% due to corrosion and the performance got recovered by 21.8% due to polishing. The surface degradation of the plates was characterized and a correlation for degraded performance was suggested.