I have seen this in many research papers that people use either H2SO4 or HClO4 for testing cyclic voltammetry of the catalyst for PEMFC. I am curious to know what can this be done in other acids like HCl or HNO3?
Thank you.
Well, chloride poisons metal catalysts in acidic conditions extremely well, so that's a clear one.
However, I'm not too sure about nitric acid / nitrates - there was some DMFC work that used nitrate salts and some post-treatment methods for catalysts use nitric acid.
There's some discussion of contaminants in working systems here: Chapter Catalyst Contamination in PEM fuel cells
Nitric acid is surely out of question. Better is to do with sulphuric acid.
You may use HClO4 H2SO4... rarely, nitric acid and phosphate acid... in some cases.
And you may use complex acids too.
@Zahid Bhat Why HNO3 is out of question? I would be grateful if anyone can share some of initial articles where people have actually proved that why only HClO4 or H2SO4 only can be used for ECSA analysis
Thank you
Nitric acid is very corrosive in nature so you won't see anybody using it in fuel cells. the other thing is that SO4and ClO4 are least adsorbed on the electrode surface. Hence they are best suited for the ECSA calculations
@Zahid Bhat thank you for the answer. But I have seen many a times people use concentrated HNO3 to clean the counter electrode, won't that also make the counter electrode corroded ? Also can you share some articles in this regards?
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