Novel Materials Used in Hydrogen Energy Economy

The purpose of this study was to do some efforts in developing some novel polymer materials which could have the potential use in hydrogen pipelines and PEM fuel cell.

In the project of developing hydrogen pipelines, sulfonated PET, sulfonated PET/Clay and PET/Clay were produced by the method of solvent-mixing. Characterizations with TEM, SAXS were made to determine the exfoliation degree of nanocomposites. TGA was carried out to measure the thermal stability, and hydrogen permeability was also taken in order to measure the H2 gas barrier performance. It was found that the addition of clay into S-PET or PET could decrease the hydrogen permeability in polymer nanocomposites.

In the other project of polymer electrolye membrane in fuel cell, our research objective is to synthesize novel polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) based on poly(1,3-cyclohexadiene) (PCHD) with outstanding potential for use in methanol fuel cells at temperatures well above 100 °C. After the consecutive crosslinking, aromatization and sulfonation reactions, or the consecutive crosslinking and sulfonation reactions, some novel PEM materials based on PCHD were synthesized. And a series of characterizations including FT-IR, elemental analysis, water-uptake, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), and proton conductivity were carried out.