Assessment of factors responsible for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell electrode performance by statistical analysis

The performance of the fuel cell electrode depends on many factors: types of materials and their properties, composition, process parameters and fuel cell operation conditions. In the present paper, cathode electrode performance in a PEM fuel cell as a function of Teflon concentration in the substrate materials and in micro-layer carbon, pore former in the micro-layer, amount of carbon used in the diffusion layer and Platinum & Nafion loading in the catalyst layer are studied. These six factors each at two levels are considered. A full factorial design would have required 2(6), i.e., 64 experiments to be carried out. With the use of Taguchi method, L-12 designs, the number of experiments can be reduced to 12. The electrode current density values are taken as responses for the analysis. Statistical sensitivity analysis (ANOVA analysis) is used to compute the effects and the contributions of the various factors to the fuel cell electrode. Some graphic representations are employed in order to display the results of the statistical analysis made for different current values. The behavior of cathode PEM fuel cell electrode was studied using humidified hydrogen and compressed air. The present paper examines the six main factors and their levels responsible for altering the performance particularly when the fuel is operated under ambient pressure. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.