Stack design hardware

STACK DESIGN AND ASSEMBLY 2.7.1. Hardware of a Fuel Cell Stack... 

Model, design and fabricate hardware components to optimize performance of single cells and short stacks. 

Tested novel hardware designs in single cells and prototype stacks with very good results. 

As presented in the previous paragraphs, mass transport processes are relevant for different scales, from the processes inside the electrode up to the gas flow distribution in a complete stack. When performing experimental analysis of mass transport, the choice of cell/stack hardware will determine which transport processes will be included in the experiment. Some possible hardware designs (c.f. Fig. 5) are listed here ... 

Although stack hardware design and sophisticated operating strategies help to reduce the frequencies of local anode starvation, corrosion-resistant carbon materials and an active OER catalyst may be required, especially under very dynamic automotive fuel cell operation conditions. 

Design Requirements for Bipolar Plates and Stack Hardware for Durable Operation... 

In order to meet these expectations, the central on-board computer (CDMS) was built around a microprocessor type, which has a long track record in space. The RTX2010, manufactured by Harris Semiconductor at that time, although was not a new and fast processor, but it had been especially designed for embedded control tasks in military and aerospace applications. It is a radiation-hardened stack machine processor that implements the Forth programming environment in hardware. 

Individual fuel lines to each ceU of the stack (parallel fuel lines) might avoid some of those problems, but fuel must be ionicaUy insulated for each cell in both the fuel source tank/reservoir and the waste container. Moreover, such parallel fuel lines are impractical and difficult to integrate in the stack hardware (e.g., bipolar plates) in this case, the design of the entire stack assembly becomes much more complicated. External tubing connections to each cell are not a good design solution, and parallel fuel supply lines make the system complicated, heavier, and bulkier. 

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