Annual Report 2007

Improving Fuel Cell Durability through Failures GTRI researchers are studying fuel cell durability to guide the development of new materials. uel cells can be expensive and typically don’t last as long as their internal combustion counterparts. Tom Fuller, director of GTRI’s Center for Innovative Fuel Cell and Battery Technologies, believes that understanding how and why fuel cells fail is the key to both reducing cost and improving durability. “By understanding the failure mechanisms, we can guide the development of new materials or system approaches to mitigate these failures,” said Fuller, who is also a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). Since he joined GTRI three years ago, Fuller has been trying to solve what he deems the top three fuel cell durability problems: chemical attack of the membrane, carbon corrosion and platinum instability. Professor Dennis Hess and research scientist Galit Levitin, both from ChBE, collaborated with Fuller F to show that the fuel cell membrane, commonly made of a synthetic polymer, is prone to attack by free radicals that create holes in the barrier. Knowing this can guide the creation of new membranes and degradation testing. This work was funded by GTRI, ChBE and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Another challenge is that a blockage can occur on the anode side of the fuel cell, causing carbon to corrode. This can be catastrophic because without carbon, the platinum catalyst layer collapses. “We’re building physics-based detailed models to evaluate different fuel cell designs that will reduce the susceptibility to this type of corrosion,” said Fuller, who is working on this project with Toyota’s Norimitsu Takeuchi with funding from Toyota. The third durability issue is that platinum is soluble in the acidic membrane, given the high electrical potential and oxidizing environment at the cathode. When the platinum layer dissolves, a band of platinum typically forms inside the membrane. Fuller and GTRI senior research engineer Gary Gray have developed a model to predict where the platinum band would form to help understand why it forms. This work was funded by Hyundai Motors Corporation. A recent gift of $200,000 from the Hartley Foundation will allow Fuller to purchase new research equipment, continue studying the degradation of fuel cells and learn how to improve and extend the life cycle and technology of these energy devices. The LBNL funding came from the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in the Office of Hydrogen, Fuel Cell and Infrastructure Technologies of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231 through subcontract 6804755. www.gtri.gatech.edu http://www.gtri.gatech.edu

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Annual Report 2007

Annual Report 2007 Contents From the Director Research at GTRI Defense and Security Health and Human Systems Energy and Environment Manufacturing Technologies Information and Communication Technologies GTRI Around the World Interdisciplinary Research Centers The Laboratories of GTRI Georgia Tech Ireland GTRI by the Numbers GTRI and Georgia Tech Supporting Breakthrough Research GTRI Professional Education The People of GTRI

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