Abstract
Establishing procedures for accelerated lifetime testing would promote PAFC development.
Measurement of temperature, current density, pressure and electrical potential in small size cells revealed that increasing the temperature was the best way to accelerate cell degradation. It was confirmed by the full scale short stack test of 18, 000 hours operation that voltage losses due to activating polarization and gas diffusion polarization increased with operating temperature.
Estimates of voltage losses due to catalyst degradation and gas diffusion blockage were made from both the increases in catalyst particle size and the increases of acid content in the catalyst layer during the full scale short stack test.
Based on the test results and estimates, we propose a method for accelerating lifetime tests of phosphoric acid fuel cell by increasing the operating temperature.
