STUDY ON THE DURABILITY COMPARISON OF STS316 NON-COATED AND CrN COATED FOR METALLIC BIPOLAR PLATE

摘要

Nowadays, many economists and scientist worry about sharply increased to fuel consumption. New energy sources have to be investigation now. This was a base on the low-emission gas, high-energy efficiency, permanence and possible with co-generation. Especially, transportation system has been restricted to system's total weight. Light weight of a transportation system offers to increase performance. By using light weight in a transportation system, it gives another benefit that reduced oil consumption, improved fuel efficiency and increased Market-value. Fuel cell is one of the new energy systems for next generation. Normally, fuel cell consists of bipolar plate, MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly) and GDL (Gas Diffusion Layer). Conventional bipolar plate material was used to graphite. Graphite has been very weak at external shock. Machining process is not easy, and the main problem is that the graphite material supplied by oxidizing and reducing agent composition of the gas leak comes. Thus, the manufacturing cost is increased by this reason. This study will be tried to bipolar plate material replacement from graphite materials to metallic material. In this experiment, STS316 base on austenite stainless steel was used. This experiment was observing an effect of surface conditions with corrosion behavior with Non-coated and CrN coated STS316 on a similar PEMFC operating condition. By the results of experimental, CrN coated condition has better corrosion resistance than that of Non-coated condition due to passivation layer on CrN coated surface.