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Studies of the Structure of Carbon Fiber Bunch Unipolar/Bipolar Plates on the Performance of PEM Fuel Cell

The effects of the structure of new carbon fiber bunch heterogeneous unipolar plates on the performance of PEMFC are studied in this thesis. Internal structure of carbon fiber bunches can be modified by embedding different thickness or number of copper plates in the glue bonding area to increase the air permeability of carbon fiber bunches in its soft end. We can add different thickness or amount of coppers at the middle of bonding area, making the carbon fiber bunches soft side to form parallel to the longitudinal fiber bunch with a small flow channel. We can also make a trench at the appropriate place of the soft side of the carbon fiber bunches to form an extra air passage. In order to make the above flow channel, a new process for making the carbon fiber bunches is developed also. This process will be easier to produce a variety of different structures of carbon fiber bunch. Finally, several different experiments are performed to help us to understand the effect of the carbon fiber bunch structure on the performance and find out the best structure of the carbon fiber bunches.
The carbon fiber bunch structures of the test cells on the anode side are all the same, but the carbon fiber bunch structures of on cathode side are all different. Experiments show that there are two structures among all test structures displayed better gas permeability. The first one is two 0.2 mm copper plates embedded within both sides of the glue ends of a cathode carbon fiber bunch, so that a small longitudinal flow channel are formed in soft end of the cathode carbon fiber bunch. When the HFC operates at room temperature and by air-breathing, the highest performance of the HFC can reach a value of 185 mW/cm2. The second one is a 0.2 mm copper plate embedded in the center of the glue end of a carbon fiber bunch, and then three 2 mm wide serrated slots are cut on the soft end of the carbon fiber bunch. The highest performance of the HFC can reach a value of 190 mW/cm2. The highest performance of the HFC with no copper plate and no slot structure can only reach a value 160 mW/cm2. The second design can increase the no structure cell performance 18.8%. Therefore, the internal structures of carbon fiber bunches are significant to affect on the fuel cell performance, and its internal design must be considered.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-1013109-161206
Date13 October 2009
CreatorsChen, Wei-cheng
ContributorsLong-Jeng Chen, Inn-Chyn Her, Peng-sheng Wei, Chong-Fu Liou, Ming-San Lee
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-1013109-161206
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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