Improvement of proton exchange membrane fuel cell performance in low-humidity conditions by adding hygroscopic agarose powder to the catalyst layer

The MEA prepared with addition of agarose in anode catalyst layer exhibits excellent self-humidification performance at cell temperature of 60 °C and 20% RH, the current density can be up to 960 mA cm−2 at 0.6 V and 500 mA cm−2 at 0.7 V. Furthermore, it also exhibits excellent long term stability at low humidity, after 10 h continuous running, the degradation is only 12.5%, which is much better than that of the blank MEA.223