Design and performance of a prototype borohydride fuel cell and control system

A direct borohydride fuel cell stack with a novel integrated manifold, along with a control system, was designed, manufactured and studied. Two fuel cell stacks were built and demonstrated. The main objective was to build these stacks to achieve a power level of 100 watts. The control system was designed to allow for fuel cell startup and to self-sustain the stack. One 12 cell stack was able to achieve 168 Watts at 14 W/cell or 140 mW/cm2, with the second 9 cell stack only able to achieve 5.6 W/cell , 56 mW/cm2, or 54 W. A design flaw was encountered which did not allow for extended operation of the stack. A quick “fix” solution to this problem was attempted in the second stack. The solution, however, introduced several new issues which resulted in degraded performance. Nevertheless, the control system showed the cell stack can operate independently. This study has provided valuable information about the cell stack and control system performance which will be extremely helpful in future designs