Metallic Bipolar Plates for High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

High temperature polymer membrane fuel cells (HTPEMFCs) are promising devices for future mobile applications. To minimize phosphoric acid migration from the membranes and to reduce the total stack weight and size metallic bipolar plates are a promising alternative. So far only very few published results are available on the use of metallic bipolar plates in HTPEMFCs. During this work a single test cell was equipped with metallic endplates to investigate the possibility of using metallic bipolar plates in HTPEMFC stacks. Furthermore we tried to simulate the environments present in an HTPEMFC by furnace exposures in an attempt to develop a simplified test method for accelerated corrosion of bipolar plate materials. It was found that the performance of the HTPEM test cell decreased by about 15 µV h⁻¹. More corrosion products were seen on the cathode side samples, whereas on the anode side sample the corrosion attack of the steel was more severe. These results were successfully replicated in simulated furnace experiments.