Materials Enablers for Advanced Manufacturing of Attritable Fuel Cells
Abstract
NRL has proposed an effort whereby foundational material research will be combined with simulation to propose a conceptual design fo,r a fuel cell with laminate construction to realize a 5x cost decrease over state-of-the art (SOA) small fuel cells (0.5-5 kW) while, retaining current performance. While NRL?s scope focuses on low temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (LTPEM), HNEI will, expand the scope of the project by investigating the potential of high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HTPEM) to f,urther reduce the costs of precious metal catalysts and polymer membrane substrates to achieve the target cost reduction. --HNEI has, duplicated NRL?s ultrasonic spray process for additive manufacturing of complex 3-dimensional electrode structures on the micron sc,ale and will adapt the deposition system for HTPEM materials and their integration with NRL?s embedded current collector design and, hybrid flexible electronics to produce a prototype laminate construction HTPEM fuel cell. Our team will leverage the Office of the, Secretary of Defense?s hybrid flexible electronics manufacturing center in Nextflex to help design a prototype that can be manufact,ured and will incorporate a one-step assembly to save costs. The materials enablers developed in this program will be combined with, NRL?s patented ?Stackless Fuel Cell? to build larger systems and fuel cell arrays [1].
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 06, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212816
Entities
People
- Richard Rocheleau
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Hawaiʻi System