TY - JOUR

T1 - Anode and cathode overpotentials under accelerated stress testing of a PEM electrolysis cell

AU - McLeod, Alexander J.

AU - Bühre, Lena V.

AU - Bensmann, Boris

AU - Herrera, Omar E.

AU - Mérida, Walter

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the IfES team at the Leibniz University Hannover, specifically Alexander Rex for thoughtful pre-test discussions. We thank the entire team at MéridaLabs for fruitful group discussions. The UBC affiliated authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Carbon Engineering Ltd . [grant ALLRP 554473-20 ]. The IfES-EES affiliated authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action of Germany in the framework of HoKaWe ( 03EI3029B ). This research was partly funded by a doctoral scholarship from the DAAD-Stiftung to the second author (Bühre).

PY - 2024/1/1

Y1 - 2024/1/1

N2 - An in-situ reference electrode was used under accelerated stress testing of a proton exchange membrane electrolysis cell. The reference electrode enabled the measurement of anodic and cathodic overpotentials. The accelerated stress test (dynamic load degradation) was conducted for over 1000 h, and it included half-cell measurements of the known anode and cathode potentials, repeated polarization curves, electron impedance spectroscopy and nano-scale imaging. The experiment had an average full-cell degradation rate of 77 μV/h. The anodic overpotential appears to be the main driver of the full-cell efficiency loss. The cathode EIS measurements indicate catalyst layer degradation despite minimal effect on the full-cell performance. The anodic EIS measurements yielded a resistance double that observed at the cathode. By simultaneously analyzing high frequency resistance, corrected half-cell polarization curves and half-cell EIS measurements, half-cell overpotentials can be attributed with greater confidence.

AB - An in-situ reference electrode was used under accelerated stress testing of a proton exchange membrane electrolysis cell. The reference electrode enabled the measurement of anodic and cathodic overpotentials. The accelerated stress test (dynamic load degradation) was conducted for over 1000 h, and it included half-cell measurements of the known anode and cathode potentials, repeated polarization curves, electron impedance spectroscopy and nano-scale imaging. The experiment had an average full-cell degradation rate of 77 μV/h. The anodic overpotential appears to be the main driver of the full-cell efficiency loss. The cathode EIS measurements indicate catalyst layer degradation despite minimal effect on the full-cell performance. The anodic EIS measurements yielded a resistance double that observed at the cathode. By simultaneously analyzing high frequency resistance, corrected half-cell polarization curves and half-cell EIS measurements, half-cell overpotentials can be attributed with greater confidence.

KW - Accelerated stress test

KW - Degradation

KW - Electrolysis

KW - Electron impedance spectroscopy

KW - Half-cell

KW - Proton exchange membrane

KW - Reference electrode

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174572314&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2023.233750

DO - 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2023.233750

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85174572314

VL - 589

JO - Journal of power sources

JF - Journal of power sources

SN - 0378-7753

M1 - 233750

ER -