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AssigneeMatsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
InventorsNobuhiro Hase, Hiroki Kusakabe, Hideo Ohara, Shinsuke Takeguchi, Yoshiaki Yamamoto, Tatsuto Yamazaki, Masayo Sugou
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The present invention relates to a fuel cell comprising a cell stack including plural electrically conductive separator plates and MEAs (electrolyte membrane-electrode assemblies) inserted among the separator plates, more particularly to improvements of the separator plates. Conventionally, fuel gas communication grooves and oxidant gas communication grooves were formed on the front and the rear main surfaces of each separator plate, respectively, so that both gas communication grooves are positioned to correspond to each other. Accordingly, when it was attempted to make the fuel cell smaller in size, the groove bottom portions between both gas communication grooves in each separator plate became more thin-walled. This brought about consequential problems of e.g. gas leakage due to fractures of the thin wall portions and difficulty in molding the thin wall portions. According to the present invention, the gas communication grooves on one main surface of each separator plate are positioned to correspond to the ribs on the other main surface thereof, whereby thin wall portions in the separator plate can be avoided as much as possible, thereby to solve above described problems.
A polymer electrolyte fuel cell comprising a cell stack including plural electrically conductive separator plates and electrolyte membrane-electrode assemblies inserted among said electrically conductive separator plates, wherein each of said electrolyte membrane-electrode assemblies comprises a hydrogen ion conductive polymer electrolyte membrane together with an anode and a cathode to sandwich said hydrogen ion conductive polymer electrolyte membrane, wherein each of said electrically conductive separator plates comprises plural striated gas communication grooves on one main surface thereof for supplying and exhausting a fuel gas to and from said anode, and plural striated gas communication grooves on the other main surface thereof for supplying and exhausting an oxidant gas to and from said cathode, and wherein said gas communication grooves on one of said main surfaces out of both of said gas communication grooves of said each of said electrically conductive separator plates are arranged to correspond to ribs among said gas communication grooves on the other of said main surfaces.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.