Home > Published Issues > 2020 > Volume 9, No. 5, May 2020 >

Design and Demonstration of Automated Technologies for the Fabrication and Testing of PEM Fuel Cell Systems

Vladimir Gurau, Daniel Cox, Devin Fowler, Matthew Carter, and Adedayo Ogunleke
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA

Abstract— This paper describes the research efforts at Georgia Southern University to develop robotic technologies for the fabrication of fuel cell components and stacks, as well as the design and fabrication of a High Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (HT-PEMFC) power system to be used as motive power and auxiliary power unit (APU) for a long range, unmanned, fully autonomous forest rover. The paper describes a manufacturing workcell consisting of a Yaskawa Motoman SDA5F dual arm robot with machine vision used for sorting, reorientation and stacking fuel cell components in presenters in preparation for their subsequent robotic assembly in fuel cell stacks. It also describes a manufacturing workcell consisting of a Fanuc LR Mate 200iD robot, an in-house made computer numerically controlled (CNC) router and programmable logic controller (PLC) used for automated fabrication of graphite bipolar plates for fuel cells. It presents the design and integration of a fully automated test stand used for testing fuel cells up to 4 kWe power and the design and fabrication of a 250 W, 166 cm2 active area fuel cell stack prototype. The operation characteristics of this short stack prototype are studied before a larger 3 kW fuel cell system will be built. 


Index Terms— Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC), robotic technology, design fabrication and testing of fuel cells

Cite: Vladimir Gurau, Daniel Cox, Devin Fowler, Matthew Carter, and Adedayo Ogunleke, "Design and Demonstration of Automated Technologies for the Fabrication and Testing of PEM Fuel Cell Systems," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 640-645, May 2020. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.9.5.640-645

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.