Optimization of Stainless Steel Composition for Fuel Cell Bipolar Plates
Received date: 2020-04-27
Revised date: 2020-10-09
Online published: 2020-12-04
Supported by
National Key Research and Development Program of China(2016YFB0701401)
316 stainless steel is the first choice for bipolar plate material in fuel cells; however, it suffers from passivation-induced corrosion and conductivity deficiencies. In this work, Fe-Cr-Ni alloy was refined using the cluster-plus-glue-atom model to obtain stainless steels with balanced corrosion and electrical performances. For austenite 316L stainless steel, the unit is described as a 16-atom cluster formula [Ni-Fe11Ni1]Cr3. By fixing the three atoms of a glue, Cr3 is required to achieve sufficient corrosion resistance, and new compositions with varying Ni contents are designed following [Ni-Fe13-xNix-1]Cr3 = Fe13-xNixCr3 (x = 1-5). The designed alloys were arc melted at least five times, copper-mold suction casted into 10-mm cylindrical rods under an argon atmosphere, homogenized at 1150oC for 2 h, and water quenched. Under the simulated bipolar plate service environment (0.5 mol/L H2SO4 + 2 × 10-6 HF aqueous solution), as the Ni content increases, the self-corrosion current density decreases to 1.10 and 0.29 μA/cm2 after acid passivation and electrochemical nitridation, respectively. These values are well below compared to the commercial 316L stainless steel (7.51 and 0.47 μA/cm2) and close to the current industry target (0.5 μA/cm2) for bipolar plates. At the same time, the contact electrical resistance (under 0.064 MPa pressure) decreases to 0.98 and 1.03 Ω·cm2 after acid passivation and electrochemical nitridation, respectively, which is superior to the 316L stainless steel (1.1 Ω·cm2). Thus, optimal alloy composition [Ni-Fe10Ni2]Cr3 can be used as the right substrate material of the bipolar plate instead of the 316L stainless steel. The electrochemical nitridation method is the proper surface treatment method for stainless steel bipolar plates, and this method improves the alloy's corrosion resistance while maintaining the same level of contact resistance.
Yichuan HUANG , Qing WANG , Shuang ZHANG , Chuang DONG , Aimin WU , Guoqiang LIN . Optimization of Stainless Steel Composition for Fuel Cell Bipolar Plates[J]. Acta Metall Sin, 2021 , 57(5) : 651 -664 . DOI: 10.11900/0412.1961.2020.00131
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