Investigation of hot pressing parameters for manufacture of catalyst-coated membrane electrode (CCME) for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells by response surface method

This paper presents the results of investigations to develop an optimized in-house catalyst-coated membrane electrode (CCME) assembling technique which is the fast and most cost-effective method for quick selection of electrode materials and components. Due to the absence of hydrogen, this method is safer than single cell. The hot-pressing conditions of the CCME of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell in this preparation technique were investigated by using a central composite design. The influence of CCME fabrication parameters like hot pressing parameters on performance of hydrogen fuel cells was studied by cathode half cell measurements. Compression pressure, temperature and time duration were key parameters varied from 35 to 105 kgf/cm(2), 80 to 140 degrees C and 1 to 5 min, respectively. The CCME was prepared with a Nafion 117 membrane and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) has an active area of 0.785 cm(2) with Pt/MWCNT catalysts of 0.1 mg cm(-2) loaded at the cathode side. The design of experiment (DOE) work was performed with the response surface method using the central composite design. The results show that the proposed mathematical model in the response surface methodology (RSM) can be used adequately for prediction and optimization within the factor levels investigated. As it was predicted in present study, The combined optimum hot pressing parameters, gave the highest performance of 22.9 mW cm(-2) predicted in this study are 35 kgf/cm(2), 93 degrees C and 5 min. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.