Development of novel proton exchange membrane fuel cells using stamped metallic bipolar plates

• We present the development of novel proton exchange membrane fuel cells.
• A novel bipolar plate with straight channels is designed.
• The effects of temperature and pressure on stack performance are evaluated.
• The best performance is 1100 mA cm−2 at 0.646 V in this study.

This study presents the development of novel proton exchange membrane fuel cells using stamped metallic bipolar plates. To achieve uniformly distributed and low pressure-drop flow fields within fuel cells, a novel bipolar plate with straight channels is designed and verification of a fuel-cell short stack using this bipolar plate is performed. In the experiments, low-temperature and low-humidity operations and high-temperature and high-humidity operations are adopted to evaluate effects of stack temperature and inlet relative humidity on performance at various outlet pressures. Experimental results show that under low-temperature and low-humidity operations, increasing the outlet pressure enhances stack performance and reduces performance differences between various stack temperatures. Under high-temperature and high-humidity operations, stack performance increases with increasing outlet pressures, while the extent of their increase becomes smaller. Compared to low-temperature and low-humidity operations, high-temperature and high-humidity operations have better electrochemical reactions and membrane hydration and, thus, better stack performance. In this study, the operation with a stack temperature of 80 °C and outlet pressure of 4 atm produces the best performance of 1100 mA cm−2 at 0.646 V.