Abstract
The growing consumption of energy worldwide and increased environmental pollution make research on new clean technologies and more efficient use of energy sources is a current need. Under these conditions, one of the alternatives for power generation in an efficient and clean, are the fuel cells. These represent one of the most promising for applications such as electric power supply in stationary and mobile systems. Increasing the durability of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is the main challenge and focus of increasing research attention. Until now there is a difference between the ideal and the reality of the PEMFC technology. To improve the durability and lifetime of PEMFC requires a better understanding of the types of failures and mitigation strategies to wear of the components. The accelerated stress test (AST) is a valuable tool to reduce the time of the experiments in the assessments of lifetime and analysis of degradation. In an AST, different degradation factors in PEMFC are applied to determine the durability of the cell or a particular component. The drop in performance and the level of damage under specific working conditions are examined during and after the alcoholic, to explain the probable mechanism of degradation of cell components. In this project we propose to prepare efficient catalysts to study the behavior of multi-metallic catalysts of Pt-M/C (M = Ni, Co, Fe, Cu, Sn, Ce and Cr) by varying the ratio of M, obtained by decomposition thermal polymeric precursor. The electrodes are physically characterized before and after tests by TEM techniques, IR, EDX, XRD, XPS, XAS, TG-MS and electrochemically by cyclic voltammeter, chronopotentiometry and linear voltammeter can show that with better catalyst for the oxidation of ethanol, oxygen reduction and decrease in catalytic activity with the repetition of several cycles. The catalysts are applied at the anode and the cathode of a direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC) during AST as a function of operating conditions such as starvation of the fuel, temperature, load cycles, relative humidity, in an attempt to illustrate the degradation process and propose changes in the preparation of catalysts to reduce the degradation of PEMFC, providing maintenance of performance over a longer period of time. (AU)
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