Performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Stack With Corrugated Sheet Metal Bipolar/End Plates

摘要

Reduction of cost and weight of the stack are the major focus of fuel cell industry for a more convenient and commercial usage of the stack. Machined channel bipolar plates have disadvantages of high cost of machining, weight, volume etc. This paper discusses the use of sheet metal bipolar/end plates, with parallel hemispherical channels as flow field paths. Single cell stack prepared from such bipolar/end plates with 16cm{sup}2 active area are tested. The cell was observed to show excellent performance as compared to the conventionally machined parallel flow field design with the same active area. Maximum current density up to 700 mA cm{sup}(-2) and power up to 2.4 W was achieved. Substantial saving on weight and cost of the stack using corrugated sheet bipolar/end plates was observed.