Synthesis & Characterization of Polymer electrolyte membranes for fuel cell applications

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I express my sincere gratitude to his holiness Dr. Sree Sree Shivakumara Swamigalu and
Siddalinga Swamigalu for their blessings throughout our stay at S.I.T.
I express my gratitude to Dr. S V Dinesh, Principal, for permitting me to carry out this project
work.
I express my gratitude to Dr. Shivakumaraiah, Chief Executive Officer, for his immense
support to carry out this work.
I express my gratitude to Dr. M.N. Channabasappa, Director, for supporting students to carry
out this work.
I express my warm gratitude to Dr. S. Murthy Sekhar, Professor & Head of the Department,
Department of Chemical Engineering, SIT, Tumakuru for his encouragement to accomplish
this work.
We express our warm gratitude to Dr Anil Rao H.N., Assistant Professor, Department of
Chemistry, for being constant support throughout the project and letting us work in his
research lab and access to all the facilities to carry out this work.
I thank my parents for their unconditional, continuous support they have provided throughout
my course.
In the end, we thank our friends who have helped us directly or indirectly during this work.

Department of Chemical Engineering, S.I.T. Tumakuru Page | iii

Synthesis & Characterization of Polymer electrolyte membranes for fuel cell applications

ABSTRACT
Fuel Cells are known as the future generation energy resource for generation of electricity as
it can meet the increasing demand and also support sustainability in terms reduction in global
warming occurring due to burning of fossil fuels

Out of different fuel cells, alkaline fuel cells have good application in the automotive industry.
The membranes in these fuel cells have improved oxygen reduction kinetics and better fuel
oxidation kinetics. Further, anion, i.e., OH−, exchange membrane (AEM) exhibit high ionic
conductivity, low degree of swelling, and high chemical stability. From the literature review,
it has been found that the alkaline stability of imidazolium and benzimidazolium bared AEMs
have been extensively studied. Further, these cations suffer from poor alkaline stability largely
from a nucleophilic attack on the fixed cation species

In the above background, the objective was to synthesize poly (arylene ether sulfone)
copolymers containing benzimidazolium cations The objective was achieved by synthesising
below mentioned compounds. The methodology adopted to synthesize the compounds are:

A. C2-unsubstituted benzimidazolium B. 2Methylbenzimidazolium

N N

N N

C. 2-Phenylbenzimidazolium D. 2-Adamantane benzimidazolium

N N

N N

The results obtained by 1H NMR for the above samples were encouraging. Further
the study covered estimation of physical properties such as water uptake, swelling ratio, and
electrochemical properties, Hydroxide conductivity and ionic exchange capacity. The
properties exhibited were superior to the results that have been reported in the literature.

The study has also covered study of stability of membranes using Density Function
Theory using Gaussian software. The study also involves estimation of effect of temperature
and enthalpy and ohmic voltage loss using MATLAB Tool. An attempt has been made to
estimate the stack efficiency of PEMFC and AFC fuel cells and AFC were found to give better
efficiency than PEMFC.

Department of Chemical Engineering, S.I.T. Tumakuru Page | iv