TY - JOUR

T1 - An investigation into the use of additive manufacture for the production of metallic bipolar plates for polymer electrolyte fuel cell stacks

AU - Dawson, Richard

AU - Patel, Anant

AU - Rennie, Allan

AU - White, Simon

N1 - The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10800-015-0832-1

PY - 2015/7

Y1 - 2015/7

N2 - The bipolar plate is of critical importance to the efficient and long lasting operation of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) stack. With advances in membrane electrode assembly design, greater attention has been focusedon the bipolar plate and the important role it plays.Although carbon composite plates are a likely candidate for the mass introduction of fuel cells, it is metallic plates made from thin strip materials which could deliver significant advantages in terms of part cost, electrical performance and size. However, there are some disadvantages.Firstly, interfacial stability of the metal interconnect is difficult to achieve. Secondly, and the issue addressed here, is the difficultly and cost in developing new plate designs when there are very significant tooling costs associatedwith manufacture. The use of selective laser melting (SLM: an additive manufacturing technique) was explored to produce metallic bipolar plates for PEMFC as a route to inexpensively test several plate designs without committingto tooling. Crucial to this was proving that, electrically, bipolar plates fabricated by SLM behave similarly to those produced by conventional manufacturing techniques. This research presents the development of a small stack to compare the short term performance of metallic plates made by machining against those made by SLM. Experimental results demonstrate that the cell performance in this case was unaffected by the manufacturing method used and it is therefore concluded that additive manufacturing could be a very useful tool to aid the rapid development of metallic bipolar plate designs.

AB - The bipolar plate is of critical importance to the efficient and long lasting operation of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) stack. With advances in membrane electrode assembly design, greater attention has been focusedon the bipolar plate and the important role it plays.Although carbon composite plates are a likely candidate for the mass introduction of fuel cells, it is metallic plates made from thin strip materials which could deliver significant advantages in terms of part cost, electrical performance and size. However, there are some disadvantages.Firstly, interfacial stability of the metal interconnect is difficult to achieve. Secondly, and the issue addressed here, is the difficultly and cost in developing new plate designs when there are very significant tooling costs associatedwith manufacture. The use of selective laser melting (SLM: an additive manufacturing technique) was explored to produce metallic bipolar plates for PEMFC as a route to inexpensively test several plate designs without committingto tooling. Crucial to this was proving that, electrically, bipolar plates fabricated by SLM behave similarly to those produced by conventional manufacturing techniques. This research presents the development of a small stack to compare the short term performance of metallic plates made by machining against those made by SLM. Experimental results demonstrate that the cell performance in this case was unaffected by the manufacturing method used and it is therefore concluded that additive manufacturing could be a very useful tool to aid the rapid development of metallic bipolar plate designs.

U2 - 10.1007/s10800-015-0832-1

DO - 10.1007/s10800-015-0832-1

M3 - Journal article

VL - 45

SP - 637

EP - 645

JO - Journal of Applied Electrochemistry

JF - Journal of Applied Electrochemistry

SN - 0021-891X

IS - 7

ER -