A research team led by Professor Won-young Lee (first author, Min-ki Choi, post-doctoral researcher) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (President Dong-ryeol Shin) announced that it has developed a manufacturing method that maximizes the basic properties of proton-conducting electrolytes, resulting in the world’s best-performing proton-conducting fuel cell.
Proton-conducting fuel cells are attracting a lot of attention as a next-generation energy system capable of high-efficiency power generation due to the high ionic conductivity and low activation energy of the electrolyte. and difficult to use.
Accordingly, the research team studied the reason for the low performance of the proton-conducting fuel cell, and found that the chemical stability of the material was lowered and the growth of crystal grains was delayed as major components of the electrolyte were volatilized during the manufacturing process.
In addition, the sinterability was greatly improved by precisely controlling the volatility of the main components of the electrolyte, and the electrolyte was successfully manufactured with crystal grains about 5 times larger than the previously reported values while having a perfect chemical composition inside the electrolyte.
Based on the electrolyte produced in this way, a proton-conducting fuel cell system has been developed that has the world’s best performance at an operating temperature of 600 degrees or less, which greatly exceeds previously reported values.
Professor Wonyoung Lee said, “If the fuel cell technology developed in this study is commercialized, a high-efficiency power system using hydrogen, an eco-friendly energy source, can be built in the city center regardless of location. I hope it will be a driving force.”
The results of this research are the mid-level research support project of the National Research Foundation and the Sejong Science Fellowship support project.
(No. 2019R1A2C4070158, No. 2021R1C1C2006657) was supported, and it was published online on October 16th in Energy & Environmental Science (IF: 38.53, JCR<1%), an international academic journal in the field of energy.
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