Flexiplanar PCB Fuel Cell

About

The Flexiplanar fuel cell is a new type of polymer fuel cell stack that avoids many of the problems associated with the conventional bipolar fuel cell configuration: it allows substantial reduction in costs at both the stack and system level. The approach is MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly) agnostic and can be applied to both proton- and hydroxide-conducting polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The approach requires no seals, contains internal manifolding and employs very low cost and high-capacity manufacturing techniques.  Crucially, the stack is fault tolerant: the system should continue working under extreme events (e.g. failure of a fuel cell electrode or entire layers of the stack). Estimated cost reduction of redox cell by 50% for the redox cell, and of control systems by 40% through integration of power electronics and control onto the modules. Over £1 million of development funds have been invested in developing the technology, and a plan exist to produce a 1Kw demonstration stack.