Design analysis of PEMFC bipolar plates considering stack manufacturing and environment impact

Stack and vehicle performance, design for manufacturing, and design for environment principles are used to develop bipolar plate design requirements and analyze design concepts for PEM fuel cells. Specifically, a list of 18 requirements identified in the literature is extended to 51 requirements and design rules. Given these design requirements, engineering characteristics or metrics used to indicate how well different bipolar plate designs meet each requirement and related targets and benchmarks are identified. Next, a subset of the engineering characteristics are used to evaluate six example bipolar plate designs made from graphite, stainless steel, and carbon composite in solid and integrated cooling configurations for a specific hybrid vehicle. For the case study of bipolar plates, correlations are interpreted for the considering relationships to compressive strength, the mass of the bipolar and cooling plates, the size of the stack required to move the ‘generic vehicle’, stack volume, disassembly efficiency, and select manufacturability metrics. Also, advantages and disadvantages specific to materials and design configurations are presented and discussed. Finally, power density and specific volume without consideration for vehicle performance was found not to be enough to assess the case study plates and, because of their common use in assessing fuel cell system design, is an important conclusion of this research.