(Invited) My First 35 Years in R&D of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells
Authors: Gottesfeld Shimshon 
Published: February 2020

I deeply appreciate the significant efforts of all colleagues and friends involved in organizing this Symposium and the very impressive list of speakers who agreed to come and actively participate.

I am expected to offer here the perspective of an old timer looking at the developments in the field of polymer electrolyte R@D over the last 35 years. So, let me share with you some observations from that perspective, pointing to highlights in the history of this technology and adding some personal insights.

1. The Vision and the Relentless Pursuit: The use of PEFCs as green and efficient power source for terrestrial transport applications, was proposed early in the 1980's by leaders of the Electronics Engineering (EE) Division at LANL. The idea faced strong opposition from the main US centers of R@D in electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering of the 1980's , including Berkeley, Case Western Reserve and Texas A&M. Their strong opposition was based on the very wide gap between the status of PEFC technology in the 1980's and a mature PEFC technology for transportation applications , as demonstrated 35 years later in the form of 100kW PEFC stacks powering commercial FCEVs. The visionaries from LANL did recognize the width of this gap and went on to hire into group EE-11 a team of electrochemists and materials scientists who would prime the technical and scientific work in this new area. Some PEFC technology advancements to be described, made by the LANL fuel cell team back in the 1980's and 1990's , helped to establish recognition of the value and viability of PEFC technology for transport application. The leaders as well as the technical staff at LANL remained strongly committed in spite of the tall technical and budgetary challenges expected and in spite of the very significant opposition -- to large degree because of a strong belief in the high value of this technology for green and efficient transportation. This high value justified , in their view, a long-term , costly development. The outcome , as seen 35 years and >10B$ later, has been the successful development of a new type of electrochemical power source for transport applications, culminating with the market entry of FCEVs in 2015. This outcome has been the result of technical work of the highest level carried out in several R@D@E centers in US, Japan and Europe, however, at the outset, in the early 1980's, the key prerequisite for such outcome was recognition of the high value of the technology and the willingness to pursue it in spite of all sort of barriers. Are there any general conclusions that can be drawn from the history of PEFC technology, that would apply to other fuel cell or electrochemical technology developments being considered, or having just been proposed. ?

2. A Perspective of a Dramatic Drop in Cost : With first market entry of FCEVs in 2015, the relative merits of FCEVs and BEVs is an ongoing discussion/debate and the lower projected cost of the FCEV vs. the BEV, is an important factor in this comparison. From my personal perspective , it is interesting to examine how the production cost of FCEVs, as projected by automotive OEMs for year 2025, has fallen under the projected production cost of not just BEVs , but also under the cost of an equivalent ICE-powered vehicle. In this discussion of the cost of PEFC technology, the potential of further cost lowering by using HEMFCs instead of PEMFCs, will be highlighted.

3. On "fundamental" and "Applied" aspects of PEFC technology : The newest fuel cell technology challenge I have been involved with, is the direct ammonia fuel cell (DAFC). This last chapter of work called for detailed consideration of the kinetics of the ammonia oxidation reaction (AOR) , in order to resolve the very practical question of the probability of reaching , in a DAFC operating around 100 degC, the power density level required for transport applications. The kinetic analysis offered for the AOR , revealed a quadratic dependence of the fuel cell current on [NH3] , supporting achievability of the DAFC power densities targeted when operating on anode feeds of high concentrations/vapor pressures of NH3. Insights into distinguishable effects of the M-N bond strength in the catalysis of the AOR, on: (i) the onset potential and, (ii) the activation energy in the RDS, will be described, followed by description of a common pattern identified in mechanisms of electrocatalytic processes [1].

[1] Shimshon Gottesfeld, J Electrochem.Soc.,165 J3405-J3412 ( 2018)