Partially sulfonated polyaniline induced high ion-exchange capacity and selectivity of Nafion membrane for application in direct methanol fuel cells

By Kingshuk Dutta and Suparna Das and Patit Paban Kundu
Published in Journal of Membrane Science NULL 2015

Abstract

Traditionally used Nafion membranes in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) suffer from high methanol permeabilities, as well as, high material costs; therefore, alternative and more efficient polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) materials need to be synthesized in order to realize better cell performances. We recently synthesized and reported the use of low cost partially sulfonated polyaniline (SPAni) as a co-constituent along with partially sulfonated poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoro propylene) as an effective \PEM\ material. This \PEM\ material exhibited extremely low methanol permeability and very high membrane selectivity. Based on these positive attributes, we demonstrate in this work that blend of Nafion and \SPAni\ can serve as an alternative \PEM\ material; since \PEM\ fabricated using 30 wt% of \SPAni\ and 70 wt% of Nafion produced selectivity ratios of 7.91

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