Advanced Graphene Based Non-Precious Catalysts for Fuel Cells

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The demand for cost effective, sustainable and clean energy technologies is at an all-time high in order to meet the ever increasing energy demands of modern society while addressing environmental concerns. Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells are highly touted as they can meet these requirements, considered most notably for transportation applications whereby they can significantly reduce the over 500 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in Canada each year. Currently however, PEM fuel cells are still too expensive and do not possess sufficient durability to be considered economical alternatives to conventional technologies such as the internal combustion engine. The high system cost and poor durability arises from the expensive platinum (Pt) based catalysts. Non-precious catalysts (NPCs) represent highly attractive alternatives, although still limited progress has been made in terms of producing highly active and operationally stable materials, along with generating fundamental understanding and knowledge regarding their fabrication and device integration.Graphene has emerged as highly promising catalyst support and electrode materials, owing to fascinating properties including exemplary surface areas, good electronic conductivity, excellent corrosion resistivity during PEM fuel cell operation. It is the objective of the present proposal to develop four types of graphene based NPCs by new techniques and unique 3-dimensional electrode architectures that can provide high ORR activity and durability under PEM fuel cell operating conditions. These NPC materials will be characterized physically, spectroscopically and electrochemically in order to elucidate the underlying factors governing catalyst activity and stability. This progress will be fundamentally crucial for the future design and preparation of technologically practical NPCs. From this, some of the most promising graphene catalysts will be integrated into unique NPC electrode designs that will be prepared and investigated in a single cell PEM fuel cell in order to optimize electrode properties including thickness, porosity, ionomer interactions, etc. Detailed investigations will be applied in order to model transport processes occurring in the electrodes and optimize the physical properties and preparation parameters. Finally it is expected that the optimized NPC electrodes will be extensively tested for performance and durability capabilities, and then subjected to post-testing characterization in order to elucidate the mechanistic pathway of long term performance loss and to design and implement mitigation strategies.This novel research will not only provide technical and scientific progress in terms of graphene based catalyst design and electrode integration that will be of high importance to materials science, electrochemistry, catalysis and energy storage/conversion technology (i.e. battery, fuel cell and supercapacitor) but also provide immense economic advantages in comparison to conventional Pt based catalysts, and will bring enormous cost reductions to fuel cell manufacture and distribution companies. Finally, the HQP personnel trained in this work will be exposed to top quality training from professors, postdoctoral fellows and senior graduate students, while being provided access to state of the art equipment in order to successfully carry out their projects and degree programs. It is expected that the technologies, knowledge and HQP trained will benefit the Canadian knowledge based economy in the energy sector, while being of interest to materials scientists and engineers, chemical engineers, nanotechnologists, catalysis chemists and electrochemists.