Tech Briefs Magazine - April 2024 - 24

New Fuel Cell Architecture Uses Nanowires for Durability
A promising, more durable fuel cell design could help transform heavy-duty trucking and
other clean fuel cell applications.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
A
promising, more durable fuel cell design
could help transform heavy-duty
trucking and other clean fuel cell applications.
Consisting of nanowires that are
less susceptible to corrosion, the innovative
electrode - the heart of a polymer electrolyte-membrane
fuel cell - could usher in a
new era for fuel cells, which use hydrogen
as emission-free power for vehicles.
" In real-world terms, this means that
we can have a more durable fuel cell that
will provide high fuel economy over a
longer lifetime, " said Jacob Spendelow, a
Scientist with the Los Alamos National
Laboratory team that described its results
in the journal Advanced Materials.
" This work demonstrates that we can get
rid of conventional carbon-based catalyst
supports, eliminating the degradation
problems associated with carbon corrosion,
while still achieving high fuel cell
performance. "
The improved durability makes this
fuel cell a promising candidate for use in
heavy-duty trucking applications, which
require fuel cell lifetimes of more than
25,000 hours.
The coaxial nanowire electrode
(CANE) consists of an array of vertically
aligned nanowires in which each nanowire
comprises a catalytically active platinum
film surrounding an ion-conducting
polymer core.
e
H* H*
H*
H*
H*
H*
H*
H*
O
O
H
O H
Vertically aligned coaxial nanowires in an electrode with protons transported in the ionomer core
inside the nanowire. Electrons transported in the platinum nanofilm shell combine with oxygen to
complete the fuel cell cathode reaction. (Image: discover.lanl.gov)
By avoiding carbon-based catalyst supports,
the CANE eliminates common
degradation mechanisms associated with
carbon corrosion.
The team subjected the new fuel cells
to accelerated stress tests to assess their
durability. The CANE lost only 2 percent
of its performance after 5,000 stress tests
cycles focused on the support materials,
compared to an 87 percent loss in performance
observed with a conventional carbon-based
electrode.
The coaxial nanowire approach is one
of several novel fuel cell designs generated
at Los Alamos National Laboratory; a
grooved electrode design was recently described
in Nature Energy.
This work was supported by the
U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen
and Fuel Cell Technologies Office
(DOE-HFTO) through the Million Mile
Fuel Cell Truck consortium, as well as
the Laboratory Directed Research and
Development program at Los Alamos
National Laboratory.
For more information, contact Brian
Keenan at bkeenan@lanl.gov; 505-4128561.
An
AI-Based Approach for Controlling Microgrids
The method optimizes how microgrids pull from alternative energy sources to provide electricity
to restore power during outages.
University of California Santa Cruz, CA
U
C Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Yu Zhang and his lab are leveraging
tools to improve the efficiency, reliability,
and resilience of power systems, and
have developed an artificial intelligence
(AI)-based approach for the smart control
of microgrids for power restoration
when outages occur.
They describe their new AI model and
show that it outperforms traditional
power restoration techniques in a new
paper published in the journal IEEE
24
Transactions on Control of Network Systems,
a top journal in the field of control systems
and network science.
" Nowadays, microgrids are really the
thing that both people in industry and in
academia are focusing on for the future
power distribution systems, " Zhang said.
In many communities, infrastructure
and its users are totally reliant on a local
power generating utility company for
electricity. This means that in the case of
a disaster or extreme weather event, or
even just a tree falling on a line, power
www.techbriefs.com
goes out until repairs can be made.
Today, many electricity systems are
smart in that they are interconnected
with computers and sensors. They often
incorporate local renewable energy
sources such as rooftop solar panels or
small wind turbines, and some households
and buildings rely on backup generators
and/or energy batteries for their
electricity demand.
This mix of power sources presents an
opportunity to address outages locally by
using alternative energy sources to proTech
Briefs, April 2024

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