Design and Modeling of High Temperature Water Free Proton Exchange Membranes in DEA PEMFC Operations

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is a great alternative in transportation however there are still some issues on the application of PEMFC, such as complexity in balance-of-plant design and cost of the system. Dead ended anode (sealed off anode) design might be a solution to reduce the complexity of PEMFC. DEA operation eliminates the expensive hardware, such as mass flow controllers, hydrogen recovery system and humidifiers of PEMFC system. Moreover, the DEA operation of Nafion (R) is experiencing the disadvantages of low operation temperature (40-80 degrees C) as the corrosion of the expensive electrodes by accumulated water. Besides it is low operation temperatures; Nafion (R) membrane is expensive and increases the cost of the PEMFC. Hence, in this study, the water free, high temperature and cost competitive radiation induced grafted membranes were synthesized and tested in both flow through anode (FTA) and dead ended anode (DEA) operation in PEMFC.