Critical review of fuel cell's membranes and identification of alternative types for automotive applications

Abstract Hydrogen is considered one of the most important energy vector of the future and fuel in transport sector. The Fuel Cells (FCs) Traction System present some advantages respect to the traditional traction engine, consisting in lower emissions and noise. The more suitable Fuel Cells in automotive applications are those that use Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM). The main obstacles to the commercialization of PEM fuel cells are largely concerning the cost, mechanical weakness and low durability of the membranes with increasing temperature. This latter aspect in particular referring to the fact that water is present in the membranes, thereby limiting the operating temperature of a fuel cell, which on average is about 80 °C. This in turn results in lower performance of the fuel cells due to a slower kinetics of electrodes and essentially no CO tolerance. It can groped to improve the performance of a PEM increasing the temperature above 100 °C, changing the membrane type making it resistant to the natural increase in temperature of the system so as to improve the electrodes kinetics. The present work has the purpose of highlighting the orientation of the current research towards the development of specific types of membrane for the FC performance improvement.