Focusing Research by Developing Performance Related Selection Criteria for PEMFC Contaminants

A multitude of contaminants are present in atmospheric air. A large proportion of these contaminants have unknown effects on fuel cell performance. An assessment of the overall performance impact of all suspected contaminants is a costly and time consuming task. Thus, a method is required to select the most relevant contaminants. A two tier down selection approach is presented. Six qualitative criteria were used to create a shorter list of 19 contaminants (first tier). Two quantitative criteria were developed based on the cell performance response to further down select contaminants for detailed studies (second tier). First tier contaminants were injected into fuel cells. Performance data were used to provide a preliminary evaluation of the second tier down selection criteria.