Reinforced Metal Bipolar Plate Structure with Stiffening Rib Channel for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell
Authors: Kim Choeun , Na Youngseung 
Published: July 2022

Clean energy has become a concern because fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change and air pollution. A proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is an environmentally friendly vehicle's alternative energy source. Bipolar plates, gaskets, gas diffusion layers, and a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) constitute a PEMFC. The bipolar plate accounts for a large portion of the fuel cell stack cost. Metallic bipolar plates are utilized in vehicle fuel cell stacks because of its low fabrication cost, high manufacturability, mechanical strength, and low weight. Despite the benefits, a thin metal plate's major drawbacks are deformation and corrosion resistance.

Stamping metallic plates form trapezoidal cross-section channels, whereas machined graphite bipolar plates can form rectangular cross-section channels. These trapezoidal channels make dimensional errors such as draft angle and fillet radius. Besides, the spring back effect makes shape errors in the manufacturing process. Many kinds of research are conducted to understand the impact of channel tolerances on the performance of PEMFCs. Mainly, inhomogeneous compression in the gas diffusion layer results from channel deformation caused by unevenly distributed clamping force and shape inaccuracy of the metal bipolar plates. High contact resistance and non-uniform reactant gas distribution would result from inhomogeneous compression of GDL.

A reinforced metal bipolar plate structure with a stiffening rib channel is proposed in this work to reduce bipolar plate deformation and improve gas transfer. Stiffening ribs are imprinted on the top of the channel. The geometric parameters of the stiffening ribs are shown in Fig. 1. Four geometric design parameters are selected in this study, the distance between the ribs d1, length of the rib l1, height of the rib l2, width of the rib l3. The stainless steel with a thickness of 0.1mm, 50mm×50mm active area, is used. The influence of stiffening ribs on mechanical and fluid characteristics is investigated through numerical analyses and experiments. The static structural analysis illustrated the deformation of the bipolar plates and GDL under the clamping force. The stiffening rib design improves the structure's mechanical strength, lowering bipolar plate deformation. When the endplates clamp the stack, the stiffening rib supports more stress to prevent deformation. The flow distribution in the flow field channel and GDL was then visualized using computational fluid analysis. Stiffening ribs increase the velocity of the reactant. Enhanced under rib convection makes reactant gas evenly distributed. In addition, stiffening ribs causes a convective flow beneath the rib, which improves PEMFC performance. Finally, single-cell studies proved that the modeling results are valid. Under the same operating conditions with the same geometry to the model, electrochemical reactions are investigated to decouple the leading cause of the resistances. The ohmic resistance decreases with the robust structural stiffening ribs, and the mass transport resistance decreases with the well-distributed reactants flow.

Figure 1