Highly Sulfonated Poly(Ether Ether Ketone) Blend with Hydrophobic Polyether Sulfone as an Alternative Electrolyte for Pr

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RESEARCH ARTICLE-CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Highly Sulfonated Poly(Ether Ether Ketone) Blend with Hydrophobic Polyether Sulfone as an Alternative Electrolyte for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Syarifah Noor Syakiylla Sayed Daud1 · M. N. A. Mohd Norddin1 · Juhana Jaafar1 M. H. D. Othman1 · A. F. Ismail1

· R. Sudirman2 ·

Received: 4 March 2020 / Accepted: 18 August 2020 © King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals 2020

Abstract Highly sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (sPEEK) offers high proton conductivity but lacks in mechanical stability due to poor swelling degree. Therefore, a promising approach has been introduced in this study by incorporating the hydrophobic polyether sulfone (PES) into sPEEK matrix. The effect of incorporating PES at various composition contents (5, 10, 15 and 20 wt%) is investigated toward the membrane properties. The membranes are characterized in terms of structural, morphology, thermal, mechanical, physicochemical and electrochemical properties. It has been found that the incorporation of PES in the highly sulfonated PEEK has significantly improved the mechanical and thermal stability without sacrificing the swelling degree and hydrogen permeability. The sPEEK/PES-5 membrane shows the most promising performance among others exhibiting a comparable proton conductivity of 7.18 mS/cm to that of pristine highly sulfonated PEEK with 8.14 mS/cm. Meanwhile, the power density result of the sPEEK/PES-5 membrane shows 99.29 mW/cm2 at par with the commercial Nafion 117 membrane of 135.75 mW/cm2 . In conclusion, the sPEEK/PES blend membrane has shown favorable physicochemical properties and considerably high performance obtained from the blended sPEEK membrane at 5 wt% of PES loading that can be considered as a promising alternative membrane for proton exchange membrane fuel cell. Keywords Sulfonation · Sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) · Polyether sulfone · Proton exchange membrane · Physicochemical properties

1 Introduction Fuel cell is a future technology for energy production that operates through electrochemical principle and classified based on their employed electrolyte type and operating conditions [1–3]. Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the fuel cells that received great attention in research field due to their clean and efficient systems where the emission level is 0% due to non-combustion process, high performance, high electrical efficiency of about 40–60%,

B

Juhana Jaafar [email protected]

1

Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

2

School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

silence operation, compact size, safe handling and low weight [4–9]. Besides, the PEMFC also has easy-to-handle characteristics which its moderate working operating temperature (40–80 °C) allows fast warm-up and start-up, use of manageable polymer materials, and absence of corrosive electrolytes [10–12].

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