Investigaton of local degradation effects

Kurzfassung

Degradation processes in PEFC lead to insufficient life-time which is one of the crucial problems hindering mass market penetration of fuel cells. The degradation rate depends strongly on the operating conditions, of fuel cells and in addition the operating conditions can vary significantly along the flow path. Therefore, at DLR the degradation processes are investigated with locally resolved in-situ methods which are combined with locally resolved ex-situ characterizations. The combination of the in-situ and ex-situ methods allows to quantify and to identify the degradation processes. Based on the locally resolved investigations the relation of the degradations processes with the operating conditions and consequently the identification of the causes and effects of degradation processes is discussed for electrodes and gas diffusion layers.