The research group of Professor Shuichiro Hirai of Tokyo Institute of Technology has succeeded for the first time in the world in developing a technology that can visualize the behavior of reaction-generated liquid water in an operating fuel cell in real time and with high resolution.This is expected to greatly contribute to the design of fuel cells.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has set a goal of "aiming to popularize about 2030 fuel cell vehicles by 80" toward the realization of a hydrogen-based society.In response to this, in the project of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), the Technology Research Association FC-Cubic and Tokyo Institute of Technology have been working on the development of analysis and evaluation technology for fuel cells using X-rays.
A fuel cell is a system that converts hydrogen and oxygen in the air (supply gas) on a catalyst to convert the energy generated during the production of water into electric power.However, if the generated liquid water accumulates in the fuel cell, it interferes with the transportation of the supply gas.Therefore, in order to improve the performance of the fuel cell, it is necessary to accurately grasp the behavior of the generated liquid water in each interface layer, but conventionally, it has been indirectly judged from the power generation performance.
This time, in the study of the visualization device, we combined the "soft X-ray beam parallelization technology" that emits X-rays in parallel and the "CMOS detector", which is a type of element that converts light into an electrical signal, and also used a fuel cell for observation. The cell was devised to reduce the effect on X-rays.As a result, the device is large enough to be installed in a laboratory, and we succeeded in obtaining a high-resolution visualization image in real time.It has become possible to measure at the level of one millionth of a meter (µm).
With this achievement, it is expected that the characteristics of automobile fuel cells aiming for higher performance and higher durability will be improved and the technological development that contributes to the design guidelines will be accelerated.In the future, joint research with companies is expected to promote higher performance, higher durability, and lower cost of fuel cells required by the automobile industry.
