Investigation of Corrosion Performance of Pure Aluminum as Bipolar Plate in PEMFC Environment
Authors: Jahan Aklima , Alam Md. Ashraful , Yonezawa Sekai , Suzuki Eiichi , Yashiro Hitoshi 
Published: July 2021

The global climate changes occurred because of the emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, NO
x
and SO
x
that are ongoing throughout the world pose a gradually higher demand for replacing today's fossil fuel based energy system by less pollutant technologies.[1-2] Among the alternative energies available, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEFCs) have been considered to power transportation vehicles such as automobiles and buses due to their high power density, relatively quick start-up and low operating temperatures.[3] The bipolar plate is one of the most important parts that impacts the manufacturing cost of the PEFC.[4] The high electrical conductivity, high gas impermeability, good mechanical performance and low cost are some of the desired properties of bipolar plate materials. Also, mainly two types of materials are used as bipolar plates in PEFC as carbon and metals. Carbon materials show a very good corrosion resistance but lower performance in separating reaction gases compare with metals. Among the many candidate materials, aluminum (Al) is considered as better bipolar plate applications in PEFC due to its low cost and low density.[5] Moreover, bipolar plate is required to have sufficient corrosion resistance even with a sulfuric acid solution having a pH of around 3.0, but it is considered that Al cannot tolerate this condition without its well surface modification which is proposed by Yashiro et al.[6] Sulfuric acid solutions are widely used for aluminum anodizing operations. That’s why it was our interest to study the corrosion of Al material for using as a gas separating plate in PEFC environment. Also, the influence of sulfate and fluoride ions on the stability of films formed on Al surfaces in aqueous solutions of sulfuric acid and sodium fluoride particularly at low concentration levels through finding the amount of corrosion was examined. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) and cross-sectional analyses were also done to observe the surface morphology and elemental composition.

In the present investigation, pure Al having 6 cm2 of area were used as the test pieces for immersion in 2.5×10-6M H2SO4 (pH 5.41), 5×10-6M H2SO4 (pH 5.14), 2.5×10-6M H2SO4 + 2ppm F-
(pH 5.57) and 5×10-6M H2SO4 + 2ppm F- (pH 5.45) solutions using reagent grade of H2SO4 and NaF. Test pieces were polished by emery paper 4/0, 6/0, 1200 and 2000, rinsed and immersed in around 100 cm3 aqueous solutions for a period of 24h, 48h, 72h, 96h and 120h at 80°C. A potentiodynamic polarization test was performed to check the corrosion resistance of Al in the simulated PEFC environment using 0.05M SO4
2- and 2ppm F- solutions (pH 3.3 and 5.8) and high current density of Al was found. Moreover, a 500h single cell operation was also performed to investigate the corrosion of Al as the gas separating plates. A glassy carbon was used as the channel former and aluminum foil was used as the gas separating plate. The single cell results showed that the corrosion of the gas separation plate was much milder than the corrosion expected in polarization test which showed the possibility of using Al as a gas separating plate in PEFC.

Additionally, the oxide film was formed in the Al surfaces because of the oxidized aluminum at the time of immersion. As a result, the corrosion products were formed and graphed as amount of corrosion versus immersion time. Firstly, the amount of corrosion was increased with increasing the concentration of sulfuric acid and increased more after the addition of 2ppmF- ions in the acid solutions. From the results found in this study, it is concluded that pure as-polished Al undergoes severe corrosion in sodium fluoride whereas sulfate ions form much lower corrosion as well as act as inhibitor when Al is used as bipolar plate in the PEFC environment.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

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