Fabrication and Evaluation of Lightweight Bipolar Plates for an Direct Ethanol Alkaline Polymeric Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell

Abstract

Increasing awareness of climate change and the dangers of fossil fuels have spurred a need for faster integration of renewable energy sources onto the electrical grid. Direct Ethanol Alkaline Polymeric Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (DE-APEMFC) have been develop as an alternative to this need, specially in Colombia, where the Ethanol Production is bigger than Hydrogen. Besides the operational Temperature make this Technology more attractive to be implemented in the Non Interconnected Zones of the Country. The objective of this study was to create lightweight DE-APEMFC by replacing traditional bipolar plates with combinations of polypropylene (PP), graphite or niquel.This study involved the fabrication of bipolar plates following a process of electroless coating over polypropylene and the tests to determine their properties in comparison with the DOE Technical Targets for Electrolyte Fuel Cell Components. After bipolar plates testing, qualitative conclusions were made based on the performance of each cell. Then, Fuel cell with be assembled with the developed bipolar plates to determine the effect on the performance measured with polarization curves.The flow channel design was selected from results of previous works where it was determined that for the ethanol serpentine flow field ensure better mass transfer coefficients in the anode, and interdigitated flow field for the cathode ensure better performance for the cell.