31 August 2021

Paper No 350 – “Experimental study of PEMFC conditioning methods” – 13th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Jeju, Korea

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The conditioning procedure of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) requires to acquire its
maximum performance and promote commercialization of fuel cell society. Depending on the conditioning
method, this procedure terminates in various time. To analyze the effect and time required for conditioning,
commonly used procedures involving constant current (0.25A/cm2) and constant voltage (0.6V) and new
method which suggested in this study were adopted to experiments and optimize most effective conditioning
methods. The best performance was reached by new conditioning method called Cathode Oxygen Depletion
(COD) during 2hours, but 4hours and 21hours for CC and CV, respectively. As that results, COD conditioning
method proceeded remarkably fast, and most of the conditioning process was finished within just few hours.
It could be concluded that the MEA activation procedure had a significant effect on the MEA durability and
reduction hydrogen gas required for conditioning.