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Review on the State of Art in Coating Materials for Bipolar Plates for Hydrogen Production by Water Electrolysis with Proton Exchange Membrane

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The Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of China Electrotechnical Society (ACCES 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 1012))

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Abstract

Reducing costs and improving efficiency are the main challenges in the production of green hydrogen through proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers. Titanium based components such as bipolar plates (BPP) account for the largest proportion of the cost composition. In this paper, some reported anti-corrosion coating materials based on stainless steel substrate for interface contact resistance are reviewed, and a research work with the best durability at present is mainly introduced. This work proposes the use of stainless-steel bipolar plates coated with Nb and Ti by magnetron sputtering physical vapor deposition (PVD) and vacuum plasma spraying (VPS), respectively. Titanium coating (50 μm) The stainless-steel substrate is protected from corrosion, and the contact resistance is reduced by nearly an order of magnitude with a 50 times thin niobium coating. Niobium/titanium coated stainless steel bipolar plates can operate in the anode environment under standard electrolytic corrosion conditions for more than 1000 h, showing the potential for long-term operation in PEM electrolyzers.

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Acknowledgements

This study is funded by the research and development project of State Grid Corporation of China (name of the project: ‘Research on Key Technology of metal bipolar plates for hydrogen production from PEM electrolyzer’, Project No.: 5419-202158299A-0-0-00).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Energy Interconnection Research Institute Europe GmbH, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Pengxiang Song & Geng Qiao

  2. State Grid Smart Grid Research Institute Co. Ltd, Beijing, 102209, China

    Pengxiang Song, Xiao Hu, Luo Yue, Gaoqun Zhang, Jie Song, Guizhi Xu & Zhanfeng Deng

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  1. Pengxiang Song
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  2. Geng Qiao
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  3. Xiao Hu
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  4. Luo Yue
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  6. Jie Song
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  7. Guizhi Xu
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  8. Zhanfeng Deng
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Correspondence to Pengxiang Song .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China

    Qingxin Yang

  2. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jian Li

  3. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Kaigui Xie

  4. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jianlin Hu

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Song, P. et al. (2023). Review on the State of Art in Coating Materials for Bipolar Plates for Hydrogen Production by Water Electrolysis with Proton Exchange Membrane. In: Yang, Q., Li, J., Xie, K., Hu, J. (eds) The Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of China Electrotechnical Society. ACCES 2022. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 1012. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0357-3_78

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0357-3_78

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-99-0356-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-99-0357-3

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