Studies on blends and composites of polyimide as electrolyte membrane for direct methanol fuel cell applications

Abstract

The biggest challenge of the twenty first century is to provide energy without affecting the environment In this age of eco friendly systems fuel cell technology could help find alternate renewable energy sources without any serious environmental issue because these can be used as a replacement for fossil fuel in transportation applications as well as in stationary power applications and other electronic applications Direct Methanol Fuel Cells DMFCs are the most promising power sources because of the advantages like simple cell design ease of refueling high energy density and low temperature operation Today fuel cell research and developmental efforts have notably increased and focuses towards the reduction of cost with improved durability of the cell The center of the fuel cell is the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane PEM which is used to separate ions by allowing the preferential transportation of proton and thus creating a barrier against the passage of a fluid The need of improved performance of a PEM has led to extensive research worldwide At elevated temperatures or low humidity condition decrease in proton conductivity lack of sufficient mechanical strength and high cost and other environmental issues are the serious drawbacks in using Nafion as an electrolyte membrane separator in DMFCs Thus the aforementioned issues lead to search for suitable alternative membranes However the different varieties of polymers together with various approaches have been tried by many researchers on developing substitute for PEMs This research provides an environment friendly approach to fabricate PEMs with favorable properties for DMFC applications The objective of this study is to develop alternative electrolyte membranes that possess comparable properties of PFSA membranes at a lower cost one such polymer is polyimide PI In this present research work polyimide has been identified as one of the most promising membrane materials used as a host polymer because of its adequate physical and chemical properties newline