With regard to the urgent need for a more sustainable industry, green hydrogen production is increasingly in focus - and thus also fuel cell and electrolyzer components, such as the bipolar plate.

Contrary to what many industry players claim, the introduction of standardized manufacturing processes is anything but simple. Graebener® is now presenting a white paper that categorizes complexity in the context of economical and scalable production from the perspective of research, mechanical engineering, production and application.

“The process chain for manufacturing metallic bipolar plates for fuel cells and electrolyzers comprises - apart from the engineering of the bipolar plate design - eight key steps: Material selection and feeding, forming, cutting, welding, straightening, leak testing, coating and seal application,” concludes Fabian Kapp, Managing Director of Graebener® and board member of the VDMA Fuel Cell Working Group, summarizing the manufacturing technologies. “It is essential for both the functionality and the durability of the bipolar plate that all process steps are finely tuned in line with each other.”

Guidance on the road to mass production

Experts use this process chain as a basis to shed light on all critical factors within the individual process steps for the first time. The result: an inventory of research and practice that provides reliable guidance for anyone wishing to invest in the production of metallic bipolar plates for fuel cells or electrolyzers.

Apart from that the focus of this publication is the process navigator, a matrix for evaluating critical factors and influencing variables of each production step in bipolar plate manufacturing. The aim is to identify the challenges for cost-effective mass production in relation to the various key applications and to derive recommendations for suitable technologies.

You want to learn more?

Exclusive insights (table of contents, process navigator, executive summary, etc.) and the entire white paper for download can be found here.

A special thank you to our interview partners Simon Brugger, Jürgen Emig, Dr. Herbert M. Gabriel, Tobias Heinz, Janik Herrmann, Dr. Michael Hirsch, Dr.-Ing. Jörg Karstedt, Dr. Stephan Kohlsmann, Dr. Dominik Kraus, Patrick Raynal, Daniel Schönbohm and Werner Volk.