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Ng, Benjamin

Publications and source records attributed to Ng, Benjamin.

Antarctic shelf ocean warming and sea ice melt affected by projected El Niño changes

Antarctic shelf ocean warming affects melt of ice shelf/sheets and sea ice but projected changes vary vastly across climate models. A projected increase in El Niño variability has been found to slow future mid-latitude Southern Ocean warming but how this impacts the Antarctic shelf ocean is unknown. Here we show that a projected increase in El Niño variability accelerates Antarctic shelf ocean warming, hastening ice shelf/sheet melt but slowing sea ice reduction.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Using operando techniques to understand and design high performance and stable alkaline membrane fuel cells

There is a need to understand the water dynamics of alkaline membrane fuel cells under various operating conditions to create electrodes that enable high performance and stable, long-term operation. Here we show, via operando neutron imaging and operando micro X-ray computed tomography, visualizations of the spatial and temporal distribution of liquid water in operating cells. We provide direct evidence for liquid water accumulation at the anode, which causes severe ionomer swelling and performance loss, as well as cell dryout from undesirably low water content in the cathode. We observe that the operating conditions leading to the highest power density during polarization are not generally the conditions that allow for long-term stable operation. This observation leads to new catalyst layer designs and gas diffusion layers. This study reports alkaline membrane fuel cells that can be operated continuously for over 1000 h at 600 mA cm -2 with voltage decay rate of only 32-μV h -1 – the best-reported durability to date.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗