• Energy Research
• 13. Climate action close
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Abstract In proton exchange membrane fuel cells, cost, reliability and durability are important issues that need to be solved before their commercialization. Their performance decrease during operation is attributed, amongst others, to the loss of electrochemical surface area occurring during long-term ageing, after transients or after an incident (faulty operation). These losses are mainly due to catalyst metal degradation and carbon-support corrosion, which are continuous irreversible processes that can dramatically reduce the fuel cell lifetime. In this paper, the phenomena linked to catalyst and carbon-support degradation are reviewed, focusing on those caused by fuel and oxidant starvation, since these faulty conditions are amongst the most critical for fuel cell durability. A description of reactions potentially involved in the catalyst degradation, associated with thermodynamic and kinetic considerations related to fuel cell operation are reviewed. This information is used to interpret the experimental results presented in the literature and reviewed in this paper. Based on these reviews, an analysis of the “reverse decay current mechanism” is performed and an alternative mechanism is suggested together with an experiment that would identify the most likely between them. Finally, some characterization methods or mitigation strategies are listed and an illustrative fault tree is built, pointing out the relationship between causes and symptoms in catalyst degradation.

Abstract “Energiewende”, which roughly translates as the transformation of the German energy sector in accordance with the imperatives of climate change, may soon become a byword for the corresponding processes most other developed countries are at various stages of undergoing. Germany's notable progress in this area offers valuable insights that other states can draw on in implementing their own transitions. The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is making its own contribution to achieving the Energiewende's ambitious objectives: in addition to funding an array of ‘clean and green’ projects, the Virtual Institute Power to Gas and Heat was established as a consortium of seven scientific and technical organizations whose aim is to inscribe a future, renewable-based German energy system with adequate flexibility. Thus, it is tasked with conceiving of and evaluating suitable energy path options. This paper outlines one of the most promising of these pathways, which is predicated on the use of electrolytically-produced hydrogen as an energy storage medium, as well as the replacement of hydrocarbon-based fuel for most road vehicles. We describe and evaluate this path and place it in a systemic context, outlining a case study from which other countries and federated jurisdictions therein may draw inspiration.

Abstract The performance of a solid oxide electrolyte direct carbon fuel cell (SO-DCFC) is limited by the slow carbon gasification kinetics at the typical operating temperatures of cell: 650–850 °C. To overcome such limitation, potassium salt is used as a catalyst to speed up the dry carbon gasification reactions, increasing the power density by five-fold at 700–850 °C. The cell performance is shown to be sensitive to the bed temperature, emphasizing the role of gasification rates and that of CO production. Given the finite bed size, the cell performance is time-dependent as the amount of CO available changes. A reduced elementary reaction mechanism for potassium-catalyzed carbon gasification was proposed using kinetic data obtained from the experimental measurements. A comprehensive model including the catalytic gasification reactions and CO electrochemistry is used to examine the impact of the catalytic carbon gasification process on the device performance. The power density is maximum around 50% of the OCV, where carbon utilization is also near maximum. Results show that bed height and porosity impact the power density; a thicker bed maintains the power almost constant for longer times while lower porosity delivers higher power density in the early stages.

Abstract Apart from natural gas there is another important natural source of methane. The so-called coal mine gas is a by-product of the geochemical process of the carbonization of sediments from marsh woods of the Earth's Carboniferous Period. Methane evaporates from the coal and has to be removed out of the active mines where it represents one of the main safety risks. Methane also evaporates in abandoned coal mines. In the federal state Saarland in Germany exists above ground a more than 110 km pipeline for the drained coal mine gas from 12 different sources. The content of methane varies between 25 and 90%, the oxygen content (from air) is in the range up to 10%. This wide range or variation, respectively, of fuel and oxygen content, causes a lot of problems for the use in conventional engines. Therefore the company Evonik New Energies GmbH is interested in using SOFC with coal mine gas as efficient as possible to produce electric power. For that purpose at Forschungszentrum Julich the available SOFC technology was adapted to the use with coal mine gas and a test facility was designed to operate an SOFC stack (approximately 2 kW electrical power output) together with a pre-reformer. This paper presents the results of the coal mine gas analysis and the effect on the pre-reformer and the fuel cell. The composition of the coal mine gas was determined by means of micro-gas chromatography. The results obtained from preliminary tests using synthetic and real coal mine gas on the pre-reformer and on the fuel cell are discussed.

Abstract In this study, pyridine was used to suppress the coke formation in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) operating on liquid fuels. Pyridine can selectively occupy acidic sites of the Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst layer and solves the problem of dehydration of ethanol in principle, resulting in a significant reduction in the coke formation rate for operating on ethanol fuel. At 600 °C, by adding 12.5 vol.% pyridine into the ethanol fuel, the coke formation rate over the Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst is reduced by 64% while a cell power output comparable to that operating on hydrogen is still achieved based on total potential hydrogen available from ethanol. The effective reduction of carbon deposition on the catalyst layer thus protects the anode layer from carbon deposition by strongly suppressing coke formation, especially near the anode-electrolyte interface. Pyridine is adsorbed onto the acidic sites of the Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst and the adsorbed pyridine may reduce the amount of carbonium ions formed, thereby reducing coke formation. This study suggested that the addition of pyridine could suppress the coke formation in SOFCs with Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst layer operated on ethanol or some other similar liquid fuels.

Abstract Plug-in electric vehicles are the currently favoured option to decarbonize the passenger car sector. However, a decarbonisation is only possible with electricity from renewable energies and plug-in electric vehicles might cause peak loads if they started to charge at the same time. Both these issues could be solved with coordinated load shifting (demand response). Previous studies analyzed this research question by focusing on private vehicles with domestic and work charging infrastructure. This study additionally includes the important early adopter group of commercial fleet vehicles and reflects the impact of domestic, commercial, work and public charging. For this purpose, two models are combined. In a comparison of three scenarios, we find that charging of commercial vehicles does not inflict evening load peaks in the same magnitude as purely domestic charging of private cars does. Also for private cars, charging at work occurs during the day and may reduce the necessity of load shifting while public charging plays a less important role in total charging demand as well as load shifting potential. Nonetheless, demand response reduces the system load by about 2.2 GW or 2.8% when domestic and work charging are considered compared to a scenario with only domestic charging.

Electric vehicles are commonly seen as one of the alternatives to reduce the oil dependency and the greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of different electric vehicle charging strategies on the national grid including the storage utilization of electric vehicles (V2G-vehicle to grid). Furthermore, an economic analysis of electric vehicle utilization is performed and the results are compared with the conventional diesel vehicle. To accomplish this aim the availability of passenger cars in Germany to be plugged into the grid showed to be high at any time over the day (>89%), which is advantageous for the V2G concept. The impact of the different electric vehicle charging strategies is investigated by employing three scenarios. The first scenario (unmanaged charging) shows that 1 mil. electric vehicles only impacts slightly on the daily peak electricity demand. In the second scenario (Grid stabilizing storage use) a maximum reductions of grid fluctuations of 16% can be achieved with the use of 1 mil. electric vehicles as storage. The last scenario (profit maximization by power trading) the maximum daily revenues from V2G activities are calculated to be 0.68 EUR2009.

This paper reviewed over 150 articles on the subject of the effect of contamination on PEM fuel cell. The contaminants included were fuel impurities (CO, CO2, H2S, and NH3); air pollutants (NOx, SOx, CO, and CO2); and cationic ions Fe3+ and Cu2+ resulting from the corrosion of fuel cell stack system components. It was found that even trace amounts of impurities present in either fuel or air streams or fuel cell system components could severely poison the anode, membrane, and cathode, particularly at low-temperature operation, which resulted in dramatic performance drop. Significant progress has been made in identifying fuel cell contamination sources and understanding the effect of contaminants on performance through experimental, theoretical/modeling, and methodological approaches. Contamination affects three major elements of fuel cell performance: electrode kinetics, conductivity, and mass transfer. This review was focused on three areas: (1) contamination impacts on the fuel cell performance, (2) mechanism approaches dominated by modeling studies, and (3) mitigation development. Some future work on fuel cell contamination research is suggested in order to facilitate the move toward commercialization.

Abstract One dimension, two-phase transient proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) thermal models, accounting for most relevant heat sources and energy transport terms, are presented. These thermal models fully consider the thermal contact resistance between gas diffusion backing (GDB) and bipolar plate, and the dependence of thermal conductivity (TC) and specific heat capacity (SHC) on liquid water, enabling the study of static and dynamic heat transfer behaviors under current loads and water conditions. In this paper, we first discussed current loads on temperature distribution, maximum temperature, transient response, and other thermal characters within the fuel cell. A noticeable temperature jump inside the cathode catalyst layer (CCL) is observed as the current step changes, induced by the different transients of heat generation and energy transport. Subsequently, the effects of water conditions are investigated. It is found that the liquid water dramatically affects the distribution and variation of temperature due to its high TC and SHC. Lastly, sensitivity analysis reveals that the TC of dry GDB contributes much to CCL's high temperature, which indicates that improving GDB TC is very important to avoid CCL overheating and explains the lower temperature gradient inside PEMFC under relatively wet conditions.