Fuel Cell Manufacturing Diagnostic Techniques: IR Thermography with Reactive Flow through Excitation: Abstract No. ENFL-383

While design and material considerations for PEMFCs have a large impact on cost, it is also necessary to consider a transition to high volume production of fuel cell systems, including MEA components, to enable economies of scale and reduce per unit cost. One of the critical manufacturing tasks is developing and deploying techniques to provide in-process measurement of fuel cell componentsfor quality control. This effort requires a subsidiary task: The study of the effect of manufacturing defects on performance and durability with the objective to establish validated manufacturing tolerances for fuel cell components. This work focuses on the development of a potential quality control method for gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs). The method consists of infrared (IR) thermographycombined with reactive flow through (RFT) excitation. Detection of catalyst loading reduction defects in GDE catalyst layers will be presented.