About > Introduction to Fuel Cells & My Ph.D. Research
From January 1997 through June 2000 I participated in a Department of Energy (DOE)-funded fuel cell project. I investigated the properties of alternative proton exchange membranes (PEM) for use in hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells. Fuel cells are currently used to provide power and drinking water for spacecraft. Working in collaboration with other researchers at Clemson and the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC), we focused on making fuel cells more practical in earth-bound capacities.
For more information about the history of fuel cells, please see the introductory chapter of my doctoral disseration. It is a 30-page, three-megabyte Adobe Acrobat file.
The basics: a cartoon diagram of a fuel cell is shown below. A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that converts chemical energy (in the form of gaseous hydrogen and oxygen) to electrical energy. On the anode, hydrogen fuel is stripped of electrons. This generates protons (H+), which are conducted across the polymer elctrolyte membrane. The electrons that were stripped from the hydrogen are shuttled through an external circuit, which is where useful electric current is derived from the device. At the cathode, gaseous oxygen combines with the protons that were conducted across the membrane and the electrons that have been shuttled externally. The net reaction simply generates water:
To put our research in context, we were focusing on the polymer electrolyte membrane. Currently, the most popular membrane used in PEM fuel cells is DuPont's Nafion. Developed in the late 1960's and commercialized in the early 1970's, it has a long production history. Despite Nafion's maturity as a membrane, it has physical shortcomings; namely it degrades at high temperatures and works well only when kept well-humidified.
In the mid 1990's a class of materials termed "sulfonyl imide," which are structrually related to Nafion, were synthesized by fluorine chemist Dr. Darryl D. DesMarteau of Clemson University. (The full name for this class of materials is bis[(perfluoroalkyl)sulfonyl] imides.)
The obvious difference between DesMarteau's polymers and Nafion is the proton-containing group. This is important because the proton-containing group is the "business end" of the material that actually makes the polymer work in a PEM fuel cell. My job was to characterize DesMarteau's materials for use in functioning fuel cells.
As part of my graduate school experience, I spent nine months at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. While at LANL I worked with Dr. Tom Zawodzinski in the Materials Science and Technology division. My time at LANL taught me the basics of fuel cell research. I was able to bring that knowledge back to Clemson and jump start our fuel cell research program in May 1998.
Our apparatus, a GlobeTech 890 Test Station, is shown below. The fuel cell is housed in the gold-colored fixture towards the bottom of the picture.
As of May 2000, I have graduated from Clemson with a Ph.D. Despite my departure, I'm told that fuel cell research is alive and well at Clemson. For more information about our current research, contact Dr. Stephen Creager.
Other chemistry research interests have been thickness measurements based on Surface Plasmon Resonance and ellipsometry. I also enjoy computer/instrument interfacing and software development. I've written a pretty hefty software package using LabWindows/CVI to do cyclic voltammetry experiments.
Having spent six years in graduate school at two different universities, I thought it was appropriate to share my graduate experiences with prospective graduate students in chemistry. So, I've written a text describing some guidelines for choosing a graduate school.
