Do you need fuel cell electrode？

There are many types of fuel cell electrode. We recommend the electrode using titanium sintered material as the substrate. It has been widely used in fuel cells and hydrogen production.The following information is an introduction to fuel cell，the composition of fuel cells and highlights the introduction of titanium sintered materials.

What is a fuel cell?

A fuel cell is a chemical device that directly converts the chemical energy possessed by fuel into electrical energy, also known as an electrochemical generator. It is the fourth power generation technology after hydropower, thermal power generation and atomic power generation. Because the fuel cell converts Gibbs free energy in the chemical energy of the fuel into electrical energy through an electrochemical reaction, it is not limited by the Carnot cycle effect, so the efficiency is high; in addition, the fuel cell uses fuel and oxygen as raw materials; There are no mechanical transmission parts, so there is no noise pollution, and very little harmful gas is emitted. This shows that from the perspective of saving energy and protecting the ecological environment, fuel cells are the most promising power generation technology.

What are the components of a fuel cell?

The main components of the fuel cell are: electrode (Electrode), electrolyte separator (Electrolyte Membrane) and current collector (Current Collector).

fuel cell electrode

The electrode of the fuel cell is an electrochemical reaction site where the fuel undergoes an oxidation reaction and an oxidant undergoes a reduction reaction. The key to its performance lies in the performance of the catalyst, the material of the electrode and the manufacturing process of the electrode.

The electrode can be divided into two parts, one is the anode (Anode), the other is the cathode (Cathode), the thickness is generally 200-500mm; its structure is different from the general flat electrode of the battery, the electrode of the fuel cell is porous The main reason for the design of the porous structure is that the fuel and oxidant used in the fuel cell are mostly gases (such as oxygen, hydrogen, etc.), and the solubility of the gas in the electrolyte is not high. In order to increase the actual operating current density of the fuel cell With the reduction of polarization, porous electrodes have been developed to increase the surface area of ​​the electrodes involved in the reaction, which is one of the key reasons why the fuel cell could enter the practical stage from the theoretical research stage.

At present, the electrodes of high-temperature fuel cells are mainly made of catalyst materials, such as Y2O3-stabilized-ZrO2 (abbreviated as YSZ) of solid oxide fuel cells (referred to as SOFC) and nickel oxide electrodes of molten carbonate fuel cells (abbreviated as MCFC). The low temperature fuel cell is mainly composed of a thin layer of catalyst material supported by a gas diffusion layer, such as the platinum electrode of phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC).

Electrolyte separator

The main function of the electrolyte separator is to separate the oxidant and the reducing agent, and to conduct ions, so the thinner the electrolyte separator, the better, but it also needs to take into account the strength. As far as the current technology is concerned, its general thickness is about tens of millimeters to hundreds of millimeters As for the material, there are currently two main development directions, one is to first make a porous diaphragm with insulating materials such as asbestos (Asbestos) film, silicon carbide SiC film, lithium aluminate (LiAlO3) film, and then immersed in molten lithium-potassium carbon Among the acid salt, potassium hydroxide and phosphoric acid, it is attached to the pores of the diaphragm, and the other is the use of perfluorosulfonic acid resin (such as PEMFC) and YSZ (such as SOFC).

Current collector

current collector is also called bipolar plate. It has the functions of collecting current, separating oxidant and reducing agent, and channeling reactive gas. The performance of current collector mainly depends on its material characteristics, flow field design and processing technology.

What can we provide for fuel cells?

We can provide titanium foam/titanium porous material as fuel cell electrode：Generally, the electrodes used for fuel cells need to be coated with precious metals on the surface of the porous electrode, generally platinum coating or Ru-Ir coating.We can provide:

Multi-precision titanium porous material(Without coating)

 Multi-precision titanium porous material ( With precious metal coating)

	Substrate: titanium powder Item: Titanium sintered material Precision: 80um Size:100*100*2mm Coating: Ru-Ir coating Using: fuel cell, hydrogen production
	Substrate: titanium powder Item: Titanium sintered material Precision: 20 um Size:100*100*1mm(Processing according to drawings) Coating: Ru-Ir coating Using: fuel cell, hydrogen production

Some customers need titanium sintered materials in large quantities, but they have a designated coating mechanism, so we only provide sintered materials, but we can also provide customers with coated titanium porous materials, looking forward to your inquiry!

If you want to learn more,please contact us,thanks.