A Competitive Design and Material Consideration for Fabrication of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Bipolar Plates

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper  is ceratinly technically sound and present an innovative approcah with adequate experimental support . from my point of view related to my scientific background , the limit of the paper may be  the scientific interpretation of the results and the possible development of new concept. The merits are the intelligent design of the systems and the  extendeed and signifcant experimental work.

I could suggest to  provide a section devoted to interpretation of the results in the frame of the relevent literature.

Author Response

Response by Authors:

The comments and suggestions of the reviewer are valued. A dedicated section (3 – E) has been incorporated in the paper to interpret the results as suggested by the reviewer.

Reviewer 2 Report

In present work, a competitive design and material consideration for fabrication of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell bipolar plates was reported. The work and presentation is good. However, authors should include the following articles as references.

doi: 10.1039/C7RA12768E.

doi: 10.1039/C6RA22295A.

doi:10.1039/c7ra07063b.

Author Response

Response by Authors:

Authors appreciate the comments and suggestions made by the reviewer. The suggested articles are quite recent and relevant to this work. The articles provide good insights related to fuel cell technology and have been referred in our introduction part of the submitted article.

Reviewer 3 Report

1.       It is better to include a detailed comparison of similar studies with the literature.

2.       It is better to provide up-to-date literature review.

3.       It is better to state specific objectives.

4.    It is better to include the error bar in Figure 5.

5.    It is better to include a clear explanation for Figure 7.

6.    The characterization data is not enough to support the conclusion in this paper. It is better to include a detail characterization analysis in the Results and Discussion part.

Author Response

1. Response by Authors to Point 1:

Authors have already tried to cite the relevant studies available in literature as much as possible. However, a few recent studies have also been included in revised manuscript for more understanding as suggested by the reviewer.

2. Response by Authors to Point 2:

Few recent articles relevant to this work have been incorporated in introduction part (literature view) of the revised article. The same were also suggested by other reviewer.

3. Response by Authors to Point 3: .

The objective of this study has been clearly mentioned in last paragraph of introduction part in the revised article as suggested by the reviewer.

4. Response by Authors to Point 4:

The graph has been modified to visualize the data clearly in revised article. Our interest is to see the Aerial Resistance at 1.4 bars, the rest of pressures are only to see the trend of Aerial Resistance against applied pressure. At the moment we do not have data values other than 1.4 bar so unable to add error bar.

5. Response by Authors to Point 5:

The authors has tried to explain Figure 7 (Section 3 D – Fuel cell performance) in revised article as suggested by the reviewer.

6. Response by Authors to Point 6:

Since, commercially available material (EG) is used for fabrication of bipolar plates, it is believed that it exhibits same electrical and chemical properties mentioned in data sheet. The authors focused only on the mechanical design and fabrication process. Therefore, chemical stability, resistance to corrosion and impermeability to gases is not characterized here. The same has been explained in conclusion part of the revised article.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

All of the questions are well answered.