HIKS – Highly Integrated Cathode Subsystem: Development and production of a highly integrated air treatment module for use in automotive high-performance PEFCs with production-ready manufacturing technologies to realize automotive performance and cost targets

One approach to sustainable energy management is the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier. This can be produced by electrolysis, e.g. by fluctuating renewable energy, and can be used for mobile and stationary applications by generating electric power with fuel cells. The management of the resulting water plays an important role for the performance and lifetime of the fuel cell. Membrane humidifiers can be used as an external component to protect the ionomer membrane in the fuel cell from drying out at any time. However, commercial membrane humidifiers do not adequately meet the very demanding requirements for automotive applications in terms of water transfer, long-term stability, harmful gas tolerance and cost.

Development of humidifying membranes

The existing excellent infrastructure for testing and our membrane expertise are used to develop humidifying membranes in a targeted manner in the HIKS project. Building on the preliminary work on coated hollow fiber membranes [1], it is now possible to coat flat membranes with suitable polymers on a Coatema roll-to-roll smartcoater. One material approach here is the use of hydrophilic, uncharged polymers crosslinked via suitable reactions [2]. With their humidifying performance, the membranes developed in this way represent a good alternative to commercially available membranes.