New composite membranes based on modified Nafion or Flemion for PEM fuel cell application

A new composite membrane based on Nafion or Flemion and Silicotungstic acid (STA) was fabricated using a simple solvent evaporation procedure. The optimum evaporation temperature and the amount of STA have been investigated. The evaporation of solvent can be divided into two steps during membrane preparation. Firstly, the solvent was evaporated at 70°C for two hours. Secondly, the evaporated membrane was kept in an vacuum oven at 135°C overnight. The optimum amount of STA in the casting electrolyte solution is in the range from 5 x 10-4 to 5 x 10-3 M. The obtained cast composite membranes exhibit good thermal and mechanical properties.; Study of the ionic conductivity shows that the composite membrane with STA gives a higher ionic conductivity than that without STA. The conductivity of composite membrane increases with the increase of STA concentration. When the STA concentration in the 10mL casting electrolyte solution is 5 x 10-3M, the conductivities of the composite membranes can reach up to 0.120 ohm-1 · cm-1 for Nafion/STA membrane and 0.133 ohm -1 · cm-1 for Flemion/STA membrane. On the other hand, the water uptake measurement shows that the water content of the composite membrane with STA is higher than that of composite membrane without STA. Consequently, due to the high conductivity and the high hydrated abiliy of STA, ionic conductivity and water uptake of the composite membrane can be significantly improved by the addition of STA.; The morphology of the composite membrane was studied using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results of AFM and SEM showed that the STA was uniformly dispersed in the Nafion and Flemion composite membranes. The structure of a composite membrane with STA has been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), the fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermoanalysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results indicated that STA was successfully introduced into the structure of Nafion and Flemion during the procedure of casting composite membrane and there was the interaction between the sulphonic acid group and STA. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy shows the existence of W-S and W-C bonds in composite membrane. This can be used to explain the previous experimental observation that the composite membrane with STA has higher conductivity and water uptake than the composite membrane without STA. The above studies allowed us to conclude that the improvements in ionic conductivity and water uptake are due to the change of the chemical composition of the composite membranes by the addition of silicotungstic acid.; The current-potential polarization characterization of composite Nafion/STA and Flemion/STA membranes was measured using H2/O2 single polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell system. The performance based on composite Nafion/STA and Flemion/STA membranes is always better than that based on cast Nafion or cast Flemion without STA membranes. The improvement in the fuel cell characteristics for the composite Nafion/STA and Flemion/STAmembrane is due to a combined effect of the polymer and STA. The existence of STA improves the fuel cell performance and make this operation feasible under high temperature.