An Assessment on Additive Manufacturing Technique to Fabricate Integral PEM Fuel Cell/Electrolyser Component

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a reliable technique to build multifunctional components with any complex geometry. The present paper assesses the role of two vital AM techniques, namely Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) in the fabrication of integral Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell/electrolyser component. Thus, the paper integrates the state-of-the-art technologies, namely additive manufacturing and fuel cell/electrolyser engineering. The US department of energy (US-DoE) target can be comprehensively accomplished for the fuel cell/electrolyser stack components in a cost-effective approach. The fundamental PEM fuel cell/electrolyser components considered in the present study are the bipolar plate and gas diffusion layer (GDL).