Design and demonstration of automated technologies for the fabrication and testing of PEM fuel cell systems

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.