Abstract
Nickel screens and foams are commonly used in alkaline
fuel cell (AFC) as substrates to support electrodes. The
methods used for fabrication of these substrates impact
significantly on the viability, with the material and
processing cost of nickel comprising almost one third of
the total. Therefore improvements to the manufacturing
speed of substrates would increase affordability.
Currently, state of the art commercial selective laser
sintering (SLS) systems are limited to a volumetric
manufacturing speed of 1-3 mm3/s. This study describes a
novel technique that multiplies the sintering speed of
nickel AFC substrates. The novel technique is based on an
integrating mirror, which creates a homogenized 60 mm
wide and 0.3 mm long beam from a Nd:YAG laser, and a 0.8
mm thick nickel powder layer in a nitrogen environment.
The influence of the nickel powder characteristics, and
sintering parameters, as velocity, laser power etc., and
post-sintering treatments of the samples on the
mechanical properties of the substrates were studied.
Based on experimental results the sintering speed could
be multiplied up to a factor of 150 compared to the
standard laser sintering speed. Additionally, because
structure of the substrate has a significant impact on
cell performance, a case study was defined to present the
performance and characteristics of the sintered
substrates on AFCs. Laser sintered substrates show
promise, exhibiting a small performance drop of less than
25 mV (about 7 %) compared to the in-house standard.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Congress Proceedings |
| Subtitle of host publication | 33rd International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics, ICALEO 2014 |
| Publisher | Laser Institute of America |
| Pages | 800-808 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-1-940168-02-9 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| MoE publication type | A4 Article in a conference publication |
| Event | 33rd International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics, ICALEO 2014 - San Diego, United States Duration: 19 Oct 2014 → 23 Oct 2014 |
Conference
| Conference | 33rd International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics, ICALEO 2014 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United States |
| City | San Diego |
| Period | 19/10/14 → 23/10/14 |
