Investigation of the open bifunctional cathode for unitized reversible fuel cell: composition and performance

Abstract

Abstract Unitized regenerative fuel cell (URFC) can operate both in energy generation (EG) and in hydrogen production (HP). Using URFC reduces the weight and size characteristics of the power plant compared to a stationary system with the independent fuel cell and the electrolyzer. However, its performance also reduces. In this work, we study URFC with an open cathode, which applied as the anode in HP. In this case, the air inflow to the FC cathode in EG, and oxygen outflow from the anode into the environment in HP. The investigation of the electrocatalysts composition for the bifunctional cathode is carried out. The advantages of using a mixture of Pt40/RGO (RGO – reduced graphene oxide) with Ir-black (3:1) for an open cathode of URFC are shown. The cathode composition presented above doubles the efficiency of URFC in comparison with URFC based on a mixture of Pt-black and Ir-black (2:1).