New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, University of Yamanashi, and Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo Co., Ltd. are working on the development of platinum-cobalt alloy hydrogen electrode catalysts that can suppress the generation of hydrogen peroxide, which causes deterioration of fuel cells, to less than half. I succeeded for the first time in.
The fuel cell generates electricity by supplying hydrogen and air to the electrodes on both sides of the electrolyte membrane.At the hydrogen electrode, hydrogen is oxidized to generate hydrogen ions.Air is supplied to the air electrode, but a part of oxygen permeates the electrolyte membrane and reacts with hydrogen atoms adsorbed on the catalyst of the hydrogen electrode to form hydrogen peroxide as a by-product.When this hydrogen peroxide comes into contact with impurities such as iron ions, the generated OH radicals attack the electrolyte membrane and decompose, which causes deterioration of the fuel cell.
This time, the University of Yamanashi has prototyped a platinum skin / platinum-cobalt alloy catalyst that controls the surface structure of platinum-cobalt alloy nanoparticles to improve acid resistance, and has a very large effect of suppressing the generation rate of hydrogen peroxide. I found.Based on this inhibitory effect, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo Co., Ltd. has enabled the quantitative synthesis of platinum-cobalt alloy nanoparticles / carbon catalyst (PtCo / CHT catalyst).The hydrogen peroxide generation rate of this PtCo / CHT catalyst is suppressed to less than half that of the commercially available platinum / high surface area carbon black carrier catalyst that has been conventionally used, and the durability is improved by more than 4 times in the accelerated deterioration test. bottom.This can be expected to dramatically improve the durability of fuel cell vehicles and stationary fuel cells.
In the future, Yamanashi University and Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo will test fuel cells using PtCo / CHT catalysts in collaboration with automobile companies, etc., and proceed with research and development for high performance and high durability.In addition, it aims to establish a higher-performance catalyst design guideline by elucidating the mechanism of action from various angles using various advanced analysis methods and computational science.
