Effect of Bipolar Plate Material on Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Performance

Abstract

Commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells can only materials provided its performance is closely related to existing technologies useful in commercial application. Other critical parameters like the utilization of cheaper materials should be taken into account during the manufacturing of the cell. A key component in the cell that has direct correlation to the cell performance is the flow plate. The weight coupled with cost of the cell revolves around the flow plate used in the manufacturing of the cell. This study explores materials ideal for the manufacturing of fuel cells in order to improve the overall cell performance. The investigation highlights the critical impact of varying materials used in the manufacturing of flow plates for PEM fuel cells. Stainless steel (SS), aluminium (Al) and copper (Cu) were the materials considered. The flow plate designs considered were serpentine and open pore cellular foam channel. Machine learning using python for the validation of the results with Linear regression, Ridge regression and Polynomial regression algorithm was carried out. The performance of both flow field channels was compared using different bipolar plate materials. The results show that metal foam flow channels overall performance was better than serpentine flow channels with all the various bipolar plate material used and Al material outperformed Cu and SS material. There is a direct correlation in terms of the outcome of the study and literature based on the data generated experimentally. It can however be concluded that molecules of hydrogen are stable on aluminium plates compared to copper and stainless steel.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/en15051886
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Additional Information: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: bipolar plate material,fuel consumption,machine learning,fuel cell
Publication ISSN: 1996-1073
Last Modified: 27 Mar 2024 08:18
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2022 10:23
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.mdp ... -1073/15/5/1886 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2022-03-03
Accepted Date: 2022-02-28
Authors: Wilberforce, Tabbi (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1250-1745)
Ijaodola, Oluwatosin
Baroutaji, Ahmad
Ogungbemi, Emmanuel
Olabi, Abdul Ghani

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