Page 75 - MODERN ASPECTS OF ELECTROCHEMISTRY

Claude LamyAet al.
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The fuel cell power plant that has drawn the most attraction since the
mid- 1980s is the one with a proton exchange membrane as the electrolyte.=
This was the first type of fuel cell to find an application (i.e.,=as an auxiliary
power source for NASA's Gemini space flights in the 1960s). This
technology was developed by General Electric Company in the United
States.= Since the AFCs were more energy efficient and could attain the
higher power densities required for the subsequent manned space flights,
the PEMFC technology became dormant after the Gemini flights until the
mid-1980s.= Since then, Ballard Power Systems, Inc. in Canada has made
major strides in this technology, particularly for electric vehicle applica-
tions.= The Ballard/Daimler-Benz/Ford venture for the development and
commercialization of PEMFC-powered electric vehicles has provided
great enthusiasm for this technology. As may be seen from Table 1, the
significant advantage of this technology is that it has the greatest potential
for attaining the highest power densities and the longest lifetime.= An
attractive feature of a PEMFC is that it uses an innocuous electrolyte (a
perfluorosulfonic membrane). The potential for reducing the platinum
loading by more than a hundred times (compared with that used in the
Gemini fuel cells) has been demonstrated in high power density PEMFCs.=
There are good prospects of further reducing the platinum loading to an
even lower value (about 0.3 g/kW), so that the Pt cost could be as low as
US$ 5/kW.= Ballard/Daimler -Benz have demonstrated 60-kW PEMFC-
powered automobiles, and Ballard has also been sponsored by California
and Illinois state agencies to develop and test 120-kW PEMFC-powered
buses.
The cost target in the U.S.= Partnership far a New Generation of
Vehicles (PNGV)= Program to develop hybrid electric vehicles that have
three times the efficiency of fuel consumption and meet the same perform-
ance characteristics as conventional vehicles is most challenging; it is US$
3–50/kW, and is thus a factor of 100 lower than that of ONSI's 200-kW
commercialized PAFCs.= The R&D projects to advance the PEMFC tech -
nology in industries, universities, and government laboratories are at a
pe¸= level. Practically all the automobile companies (Daimler -Benz, GM,
Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan) are collaborating with (1)
chemical industries (Du Pont, W.L.= Gore and Assoc., Asahi Chemical,
Asahi Glass, Solvay, Hoechst) to develop advanced proton-conducting
membranes for electrolytes and (2) high-technology engineering compa-
nies [Ballard; International Fuel Cells (IFC), Energy Partners, Allied
Signal, MTI, H-Power in the United States; Siemens in Germany; De Nora