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.