Synthesis, characterization and determination of pollution CO platinum binary alloys for use at the anode of a PEM fuel cell

Fuel cells are devices that directly convert the chemical energy to electrical energy . Within many types of fuel cells, PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cell is the most prefferred one. Indeed, PEM fuel cell is the most promising candidate as an energy source thanks to its advantages such as low operating temperature, zero emissions and no moving parts. One of the biggest problems in front of the commercialization of PEM fuel cell is that the impurities within the fuel stream most notably CO, causes the catalysts to be poisoned easily leading to huge losses in the cell performance. The hydrogen oxidation reaction occuring at the anode of the PEM fuel cells is limited by CO poisoning because of the potantional losses. Currently most studies are focused on the development of the elecrocatalysts to be used for the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) occuring at the anode. In this study, it was aimed to develop cheap and active catalyst that can be used in the electrocatalyst at HOR in PEM fuell cell. Catalysts were prepared by depositing the binary catalysts of platinum formed by transition metals, Ag, Cu and Fe on carbon support by wet impregnation reduction method and characterized by XRD, FT-IR ,Cyclic Voltammetry, CO-stripping and mixture gas testing. After the characterization studies it was found that the catalysts have macroporous structures and their electrochemically active areas are varying between 34,21 and 800.88 m² / g . The mean platinum particle size is between 1.69 and 5.22 nm and it was seen that catalysts with higher platinum atomic ratio have smaller particle sizes. Although PtAg-11/C catalysts has the highest elecroactive surface area with 800.88 cm²/mg its tolerance was found to be very low in the CO-stripping experiments it was observed that the PtAg / C catalyst gave the highest mass activities as well and the mass activity in inversely proportional with the platinum content. As a result, it was concluded that among the catalysts synthesized PtAg-31/C and PtAg-11/C can be used as alternative catalyst in the anode of the PEM fuel cell.