Executive Summary : | In the recent past, due to emergence of clean, green and sustainable electric mobility, there is huge demand of battery electric vehicle (BEV) and fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), as an alternative to conventional fuel driven vehicles. FCEV has several advantages over BEV such as higher efficiency, easy operability and most importantly very high energy density compared to BEV. The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), fueled with green hydrogen, is the highly preferred fuel cell type used in FCEVs. For the last few years, the low temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell is more in the demand due to large green hydrogen production which is taking quantum leap due to many developments in renewable energy powered water electrolyzers. However, due to high fuel cell component’s cost (bipolar plates, electro-catalysts and membrane), poor durability and lower power densities, the global commercialization of FCEV is being hampered. Fortunately, the component cost is declining due to significant progresses in nano-materials developments (i.e. non-PGMs based electro-catalysts and non-Nafion based membranes). Despite being all these developments, the degradation of functional materials (membrane, electro-catalyst and bi-polar plates) is very common under working environments of PEMFC resulting into deteriorating fuel cell performance. Proton exchange membrane (PEM), being one of the core components in PEMFC, plays a key role in separating both the electrodes (i.e. anode and cathode), allow only protons to pass through and restrict fuel crossover. Unfortunately, the PEM is highly prone to degradation during PEMFC operations, causes fuel crossover, un-desired reactions and mixed potential and thus reducing PEMFC power and energy densities resulting into poor driving mileage and lowered efficiency. The membrane thinning, pin-hole formation, polymer backbone detachment and peroxide radical attacks during PEMFC operations are some of factors causing membrane degradation and affecting PEMFC performance to a large extent. Therefore, with the proposed research proposal our key objective is to prepare a proton conducting membrane and to identify the membrane degradation under both in-situ and ex-situ conditions followed by design and process optimization to mitigate membrane degradation under PEMFC environment. Our end target with the proposed work is to achieve a stable yet high proton conductive membrane for low temperature PEMFC for power applications Approach: Based on the aforementioned hypothesis, the following approach is planned phase wise to meet the objectives. Phase 1: Scalable synthesis of proton conducting membrane and characterization to achieve the desired properties of pristine membrane Phase 2: Analyzing the membrane’s ex-situ & in-situ degradation. Phase 3: Comparing the membrane properties before (i.e. pristine) and after (i.e. degraded) the PEMFC operation Phase 4: Performance evaluation of PEMFC for stabilized membrane |