Author

Patrik Landor

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Engineering

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Degree

MSE in Mechanical Engineering

Date Completed

2018

First Committee Member

Santamaria, Anthony

Second Committee Member

Mortazavi, Mehdi

Third Committee Member

Gettens, Robert

Additional Committee Member(s)

Cheraghi, Hossein

Abstract

"The goal of the thesis research outlined herein was to create a method for MEA manufacturing that was easily implemented into a lab setting, or manufacturing environment, and prove the optimized performance of said MEA. The MEA designed for use in the optimization testing utilized a Mylar outer frame, acting as a hard stop during both the hot- press and assembly procedures. This method of manufacturing MEA’s simplifies the hot-press and assembly process drastically compared to other methods. The MEA optimization scheme in this research comprised of two main objectives. Manufacture the MEA for as cheaply as possible, and provide acceptable performance from optimizing the hot-press parameters used in manufacturing. Many researchers in the past have determined optimal hot-press conditions for varying material selections, however very little, if any, research has been done on MEA’s using GDE-CT along with Nafion XL. Additionally, the use of Mylar frames as hard-stops for both hot-press and assembly has yet to be studied in full detail. The GDE’s built for the purposes of the testing outlined in this thesis were made from cloth GDL with MPL and were spray coated with Platinum catalyst. The lowest cost MEA while still maintaining acceptable performance utilized a catalyst loading of 0.03 mg/cm2 on the anode and 0.2 mg/cm2 on the cathode. Since the primary cost driver in fuel cells is the platinum catalyst, this parameter was minimized while performance was evaluated. A 29% reduction in iii peak power was observed going from 0.5 mg/cm2 on both the anode and cathode, to the optimal loading MEA. This came with a 36% reduction in cost, which was seen as a favorable trade-off for the purposes of this study."

Share

COinS