Challenges in flow field manufacturing, testing and simulation for PEM fuel cells

Abstract
High efficient fuel cells are required to be competitive with commercial energy sources and are under actual investigation. Since the best catalyst for low temperature fuel cells is platinum the main focus is set not on the catalyst but on the flow field of fuel cells. To evaluate the influence of different flow fields new designs were developed and manufactured. The innovation of these flow fields are that they were simulated before manufacturing to avoid time consuming production processes and testing procedures. The evaluation of these flow fields are done with a segmented cell to determine the current and temperature distribution in the fuel cell. To obtain correct results the production process has to be extreme precise and often cause problems. The need of this accuracy is based on the assembly of the cell and the requirement of a gas tight cell. If any component of the cell is not in perfect contact with the next one no feasible results can be obtained. Furthermore, dynamic processes occur during the activation of a fuel cell and these complex changes of the materials are hard to simulate. To obtain useful information about the influence of the flow field interdisciplinary know-how and collaborations are essential. First results with graphite flow field are already produced and consecutive measurements with gold coated flow fields will follow.