A Novel Accelerated Stress Test for a Representative Enhancement of Cathode Degradation in Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

Performance decay of direct methanol fuel cells hinders technology competitiveness. The cathode electrochemical surface area loss is known to be a major reason for performance and it mainly affected by potential dynamics, locally influenced water crossover. To mitigate such phenomenon, novel materials components need developed intensively tested in relevant operating conditions. Thus, the development representative accelerated stress tests crucial reduce necessary testing time assess material stability. In literature, most diffused commonly enhance specific degradation mechanism, each resulting limited representativeness complex combination interaction mechanisms involved during real-life operation. This work proposes test procedure permitting quantifiable predictable acceleration degradation, with goal being real device results obtained 200 h are validated comparing both situ post mortem measurements those performed 1100 operational test, demonstrating an factor equal 6.25x confirming consistent degradation.