Performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell During Cyclic Activation Process

In this paper, we report a new approach in the activation process and analyse its effects on the performance of PEMFC. An activation process was set-up considering four loading cycles performance at room temperature. Each cycle consisted of one hour loading period at 0.6 volt followed by fully voltage scanning at open-end and backpressure condition. This cycle was repeated until saturated polarisation curve was reached. A commercial catalyst coated membrane was used in this purpose. During the activation process, MEA performance showed an effective increase, with the maximum power density rose from 128 to 200 mW/cm2 and 220 mW/cm2, for open-end and back pressure condition, respectively. Moreover, significant decrease in the Tafel slope and increase in the exchange current density could indicate that there was a reduction in the dead region at the catalyst layer along the process. Cyclic activation process also benefit to slow water content recovery in the Nafion membrane in order to prevent the membrane from over swelling.