Fabrication of chitosan/natural zeolite composite-based polymer electrolyte membranes

Abstract

Natural materials, such as chitosan (CS) and natural zeolite (NZ), are widely used for energy applications such as fuel cells because of their favorable properties. This study reported the fabrication of chitosan/natural zeolite composite (CS/NZ)-based polymer electrolyte membranes. The solution casting method was used to produce the membranes. There are 5 variations of NZ mass based on the dry weight of CS (5% w/w, 10% w/w, 15% w/w, 20% w/w, 25% w/w). The results show that the addition of NZ as filler to the matrix of CS can improve the mechanical properties of the resulted membranes. The highest tensile strength of CS/NZ-based membranes is 1.6 MPa, which comes from CS/NZ (10% w/w), while CS/NZ (5% w/w) gives the highest elongation at break of all samples (18.2%). Related to the oxidative stability, the CS/NZ-based membranes 5% w/w has the highest oxidative stability at 103.2 minutes in Fenton’s reagent (3wt% hydrogen peroxide and iron sulfate 2 ppm). Besides, the thermal properties of CS/NZ-based membranes are more favorable than that of the CS-based membranes. These results imply that the addition of NZ provides the enhanced performance of composite membranes and has good potential to be used as a membrane for fuel cell application.