Effect of MEA conditioning on PEMFC performance and EIS response under steady state condition

In this work, effect of three different commonly used on-line membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) conditioning procedures on the final MEA performance and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) response was studied under different operation conditions. The conditioning methods were: constant voltage, constant current and US fuel cell council (USFCC) protocol. Obtained results under steady state condition indicated that the performance and EIS response of all three identical MEAs were different even in the wide range of operational conditions. Results also showed that MEA conditioning by constant low current density is not an effective procedure compared to constant voltage and USFCC activation protocols in order to reach to the maximum performance of MEA even after long time conditioning and under different operation conditions. It has high solution, charge and mass transfer resistances. Given that the initial structure of three MEAs was identical, it could be concluded that the MEA activation procedure had an irreversible effect on the MEA interfacial properties which could not be corrected even at high pressure and high relative humidity of gases. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.