| Fuel cells are a major area of research in ongoing efforts to find alternate sources of energy. Today these efforts have become ever the more necessary in the face of spiraling costs of conventional sources of energy and concerns about global warming. Most fuel cells consume hydrogen to produce, for the most part, only water in their exhaust. They are also capable of achieving significantly higher efficiencies than conventional automobile internal combustion engines. Since cost still remains one of the most intractable challenges to the advent of fuel cells, it is imperative that every effort be made to lower the costs of fuel cell production, operation and maintenance as well as improving overall efficiency. The air circulation system of a fuel cell is designed to provide oxygen to the cathode of the fuel cell. Air taken from the surroundings, however, often contains pollutants including dust, SO2, NO 2 and various other gases. These gases may severely degrade various components of system, especially for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) type fuel cells, including the catalyst, membrane electrode assembly and other components. Moreover, these pollutants may lead to specific behavior based on ambient air composition at the test site thereby confusing researchers. In order to address these issues, this study seeks to identify these pollutants and examine the mitigation strategies to mitigate them. Also discussed is whether these pollutants have an effect debilitating enough to justify the extra cost and potential parasitic losses associated with these mitigation strategies. Adsorptive filtration is identified as the most appropriate cathode side air quality system for fuel cells. Performance of cathode side fuel cell filters are examined under varying relative humidity, temperature, air flow rate and pollutant concentration conditions. An estimated filter survival time under realistic conditions is also suggested. |
