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Hydrogen PEM fuel cells offer a viable way of providing the electrical energy to power a vehicle. With rapid refueling and acceptable range on a tank of fuel, they provide a complementary technology to battery-powered EVs that will ultimately offer a route to decarbonising transport. However, the demands on an automotive fuel cell stack provide a challenging environment for key components within the membrane electrode assembly (MEA). Frequent start-up shut-down events and freeze starts can create conditions that cause corrosion within the fuel cell. The risk of fuel starvation to individual cells within a large stack of several hundred cells is also a potential cause of corrosion which will inevitably lead to degradation and reduced stack lifetime. While there are system-level mitigation strategies that can be employed in terms of design, controls and interventions, the most efficient solution is to improve the intrinsic stability of the key cell components themselves.

In the search for clean and efficient power, PEM fuel cells have been identified as the technology that can meet our future needs for transport applications. Hydrogen-powered PEM fuel cell vehicles are perceived to give the ultimate advantage, but the complications involved with hydrogen storage and refuelling, as well as the lack of infrastructure call for a different solution. In the near term, this is almost certain to be the on-board generation of hydrogen from a readily available fuel. At Johnson Matthey, a novel modular reformer (HotSpot™) has been developed for methanol, and has been demonstrated to have many of the qualities that are required for automotive applications. Auxiliary technologies for CO removal (Demonox) and aftertreatment have also been developed, and integrated with the reformer to form 20 kWe processor, which is currently undergoing brass-board testing.