H2-Br2 Fuel Cell Performance with High Surface Area Bromine Electrode Materials

The hydrogen electrode in a H₂-Br₂ fuel cell (Figure 1) has high active surface area because of the nano catalyst particle on carbon support material that is used.  Current electrodes used for the bromine reactions are made of high porosity carbon fiber based gas diffusion media that have very low surface area. Currently, to obtain high surface area, multiple layers of this material are used. While this leads to an increase in the surface area, it also leads to high ionic and molecular transport resistance. To overcome this problem, our research group has developed a high surface area carbon diffusion material. This material is made by growing multiwall carbon nanotubes directly on the carbon fiber substrate (Figure 2). In this presentation, we will discuss the advantages of this material and compare the discharge/charge performance of an acid-based H₂-Br₂fuel cell with this material versus that with conventional electrode materials. 

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by NSF through grant number EFRI-1038234 and DOE/ARPA-E under award number DE-AR0000262.