Research on Design, Development and Manufacturing of Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEFC) Stack, for a Sustainable Energy Transition

Dear Colleagues,

The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era and of human civilization. The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century, and is proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented. The widespread use of fossil fuels is considered as the major source of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, which are largely responsible for global warming and climate change; moreover, global energy consumption is expected to continue to grow in the coming decades, with fossil fuels continuing to dominate global energy production.

In this context, the concept of mitigating climate change by transitioning to an energy system with fewer greenhouse gas emissions is particularly attractive. For that, hydrogen, as a near zero-emission energy carrier, if produced from renewable energy sources, is viewed as a promising candidate to overcome the challenges surrounding the energy transition.

Low temperature fuel cell stacks, with a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM), due to their ability to generate power from hydrogen, are fundamental in the energy transitioning. In fact, the power generated by renewable energy systems, stored as hydrogen, can be reconverted to electricity by a fuel cell stack. In a stack, several issues have to be overcome, i.e., the reactants must be equally distributed between the cells and over the active area, the operation correct temperature has to be kept constant, the individual cells must be assembled and sealed with care, and the components must be correctly sized to avoid breakages and failures.

For these reasons, many authors have studied the design of a PEM fuel cell stack such as bipolar plates, clamping plates, gaskets, flow–field, and so on, using both numerical modelling and experimental approaches.

This Special Issue aims to offer the most research advances and the general principles on designing, developing and manufacturing of a fuel cell stack. In particular, it focuses on the behavior of fuel cell stacks in real or near-real application situations (performance under varying loads, failures, vibration analysis, in operando stress and thermal analysis), numerical simulation for the design of bipolar plates, internal distribution of reagents, mechanical problems of the device, system integration, problems of reliability and duration, safety, cooling, optimization of dimensions and weight, architectural solutions, and research on problems relating to the processing and use of materials (innovative and traditional). In conclusion, it will contribute to enriching the background in the field related to stack engineering research, to allow its perfect, safe and reliable operation.

Dr. Orazio Barbera
Dr. Giosuè Giacoppo
Guest Editors

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• fuel cell stack design
• flow–field design
• bipolar plate design
• stack cooling
• CFD and FEM analysis
• hydrogen power generation
• materials machining
• fuel cell stack system integration
• fuel cell stack test protocols
• size and weight optimization