A New Complex Design for Air-Breathing Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells Aided by Rapid Prototyping

Abstract

One of the most difficult issues to fabricate a fuel cell with a complex design is the manufacturing method. To solve this difficulty, the authors applied an innovative method of fuel cell fabrication, i.e., rapid prototyping technology. The rapid prototyping technology can both fabricate the complex design and shorten the fabrication time. In this paper, the authors used a 3D software (CATIA) on the fuel cell design and utilized the rapid prototyping to accelerate the prototype development of complex stack designs and to verify the practicability of the new fabrication for fuel cells. The honeycomb shape methanol reservoir and cathode structure design of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and the complex flow distributor design of a monopolar air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack, which were almost impossibly manufactured by traditional manufacturing, were made in this study. The performance of the traditional air-pumping DMFC and that of an air-breathing DMFC were compared in this study. The feasibility of a complex pseudobipolar design DMFC stack was also verified. For the miniature air-breathing PEMFC made by rapid prototyping with ABS material, its performance is close to the state-of-the-art compared to previous published literatures (Hsieh et al. 2006, “Study of Operational Parameters on the Performance of Micro PEMFCs With Different Flow Fields,” Energy Convers. Manage., 47, pp. 1868–1878; Schmitz, A., Wagner, S., Hahn, R., Uzun, H., and Hebling, C., 2004, “Stability of Planar PEMFC in Printed Circuit Board Technology,” J. Power Sources, 127, pp. 197–205; Hottinen, T., Mikkola, M., and Lund, P., 2004, “Evaluation of Planar Free-Breathing Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Design,” J. Power Sources, 129, pp. 68–72). A new solution to manufacture complex fuel cell design, rapid prototyping, has been first applied to the fabrication of complicated flow channels in ABS materials and directly used in both DMFC and PEMFC in this paper. Its feasibility was verified and its promising performance was also proved.

Critical Review—The Versatile Plane Parallel Electrode Geometry: An Illustrated Review

“…266 3D printing has also been applied to demonstrate the construction of several design concepts on a small scale, such as metallised polymer flow plates with integrated flow fields have in a water electrolyser, 320 or static mixers coated with a graphite to form a type of porous electrode for a mini-flow battery. 321 Other 3D printed electrodes include metal thermal sprayed PEMFC bipolar plates, 322 a miniature PEM stack with honeycomb electrodes 323,324 and micro-325 or methanol 326,327 fuel cells.…”

Rapid prototyping methods for the manufacture of fuel cells

“…There are several papers showing the potential for using RP methods to fabricate elements for fuel cell with complicated shapes or housing characterised by reduced weight and improved heat dissipation designed for mobile applications such as aviation technology and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) [1,[7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…The process is greatly improved by using the 3D printing process to deposit the layer of platinum. The inkjet printing method is 4 to 5 times faster than screen printing [8,11]. The main parameters that determine the application of a single membrane in a PEMFC designed stack are power output, stability of electrical parameters under load, and water management.…”