The Influence of Air-Bleeding on Co-Poisoning of PEM Fuel Cell

The PEM fuel cell has broad applications such as stationary power generation, transportation power sources and portable power generators. From commercial considerations, most anodes of PEM fuel cells use reformate gas as their fuels. However, reformate gas will have small content of carbon monoxide (CO) which will seriously poison platinum (Pt) catalyst electrode, and result in cell performance degradation significantly. The anode air-bleeding method is a preferable way to solve this CO-poisoning problem due to its simplicity, low cost and effectiveness. In this study, a test PEM fuel cell (single cell, active area 5cm × 5 cm) is assembled, its anode fuel uses hydrogen with 52.7ppm CO. Air-bleeding method then is applied to investigate and analyze the influence of CO poisoning on the performance of this PEM fuel cell.