Performance of Platinum Black and Supported Platinum Catalysts in a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

Catalyst utilization studies are very important in PEM and Direct Methanol Fuel cell systems. This article studies the effect of nafion content on the catalyst utilization of Platinum Black and Platinum/Carbon electrodes when used as cathodes in a Direct Methanol fuel cell. It is seen that the effect of nafion content is more pronounced in the case of supported catalysts than in the case of unsupported catalysts. Polorization curves indicate that supported catalysts perform much better compared to unsupported catalysts.