Preparation process of graphite-based composite bipolar plate by vacuum impregnation

Abstract

The vacuum impregnation resin method was used to prepare composite bipolar plates in fuel cell in this study. The effects of the content of epoxy resin diluent added, temperature and pore structure of graphite on the impregnation content during the vacuum impregnation process were studied. The electrical conductivity, flexural strength and airtightness of the prepared fuel cell bipolar plates were investigated. The results show that increasing the content of diluent and temperature can reduce viscosity and increase the upper limit of resin impregnation, enabling the resin to impregnate and fill into smaller pores, while there are still some pores that cannot be filled and saturated, such as the pores below 0.1 μm are difficult to fully penetrate in the expanded graphite plate, resulting in the resin being unable to completely fill the entire pores of the expanded graphite. The optimal temperature for impregnating the epoxy resin/diluent system by vacuum impregnation is 50 ℃, and the optimal addition ratio of diluent ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether is 15%(mass fraction). The obtained bipolar plate has excellent electrical conductivity of 340.12 S/cm, flexural strength of 41.52 MPa, and helium permeability of 5.4×10-7 cm3·cm-2·s-1.

Keywords

• fuel cell
• bipolar plate
• vacuum impregnation
• expanded graphite