本研究使用端板固定燃料電池/電堆，並探討使用端板與直接使用兩端極板作為電池支撐，對電池性能之影響。另外，雙極板為質子交換膜燃料電池(Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, PEMFC)核心元件之一，其重量與體積約佔燃料電池堆的一半，為使雙極板重量減輕，本研究將進行雙極板內之流道減薄，並且搭配不同規格之金屬多孔材，針對氣體流速、多孔材孔洞大小及內部氣體擴散係數進行探討，以了解流道減薄及多孔材規格對低溫質子交換膜燃料電池之影響。研究結果顯示，有使用端板之燃料電池因受壓較均勻，故有使用端板之電池性能有效提升10 %。而在薄化燃料電池研究上，當流量固定時，流道減薄使氣體流速變快，增加氣體與金屬肋條碰撞之機率，使氣體較易往觸媒區反應，進而增加反應面積，可使交換電流密度提高，故使用流道減薄之電池，不僅能薄化流道並同時提升電池性能。另外，於搭配不同規格金屬多孔材之研究中，隨著負載越高，因流量較大，氣體進入非達西區，使得氣體進入金屬多孔材的摩擦力較大，性能受氣體碰撞機率影響較大，故選用孔洞較小、氣體碰撞機率高之多孔材性能較佳，此結果與交流組抗分析結果相符，此研究有助於未來金屬多孔材PEMFC之規格選用。;In this research, the end plate was used to fix the fuel cell/stack, and the effect of using the end plate and directly using the ends of the plate as a battery support was investigated. In addition, the bipolar plate is one of the components of the Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and the weight and volume account for about half of the fuel cell stack. In order to reduce the weight of the bipolar plate, this study let the flow path in the plate is thinned, and with different specifications of metal foam material, the size of the foam holes and the internal gas diffusion coefficient are discussed to understand the flow path thinning and foam material specifications for the effect of PEMFC. The results of this study show that the fuel cell using the end plate maintains uniform pressure in the cell, so the PEMFC performance of the end plate will effectively increase by 10%. The change in the performance is due to the ease of uniform and higher rate of distribution of gas by thinning the flow channel in the fuel cell. When the flow rate of the gas is fixed, the flow of the gas is faster as the flow path is thinner. Because there is an increase in probability of gas to collide with the metal foam and higher amount of gas will enter the catalyst zone, thus increase the area of reaction and exchange current density. So thinner flow channel can effectively improve the performance of PEMFC. The influence of metal foam in the performance of the PEMFC is also studied. We have used metal foams with different specifications and observed their advantages and disadvantages with respect to the performance of PEMFC. In our research we observed that PEMFC with metal foam of lower pore size is having better performance, because the gas entering the non-Darcy area, the friction is larger when the gas into the porous metal material, the performance is greatly affected by the gas collision probability. The results of this study are helpful for researchers in future for better understanding of cell design and to select the suitable metal foam for high performance PEMFC depending upon the operating parameters.
