Validation of Voltammetric Methods for Online Analysis of Platinum Dissolution in a Hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell Stack

Abstract

Platinum dissolution in PEM fuel cells is an increasingly important indicator for the state-of-health and lifetime prediction of fuel cells in real applications. For this reason, portable online analysis tools are needed that can detect and quantify platinum with high sensitivity, selectivity, and accuracy in the product water of fuel cells. We validated the hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) and non-toxic bismuth film electrodes for the voltammetric determination of platinum for this purpose. Bismuth films were prepared by reductive deposition on both a glassy carbon solid state electrode and on a screen-printed electrode (film on-chip electrode). Both bismuth film electrodes could be successfully validated for the determination of platinum by adsorptive stripping voltammetry. An LOD of 7.9 μg/L and an LOQ of 29.1 μg/L were determined for the bismuth film solid state electrode, values of 22.5 μg/L for the LOD and of 79.0 μg/L for the LOQ were obtained for the bismuth film on-chip electrode. These numbers are still much higher than the results measured with the HMDE (LOD: 0.76 ng/L; LOQ: 2.8 ng/L) and are not sufficient to detect platinum in the product water of a fuel cell run in different load tests. The amount of dissolved platinum produced by a 100 W fuel cell stack upon dynamic and continuous high load cycling, respectively, was in the range of 2.9–4.1 ng/L, which could only be detected by the HMDE.