Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Keisuke Suda

Kentaro Ishida

Yasuhiro Watanabe

Seiji Sugiura

Shuhei Goto

Hideharu Naito

Ryoichi Yoshitomi

Masaaki Sakano

Masaru Oda

Kenichi Murakami

Kenji Nagumo

Akihiro Matsui

Norihisa Kobayashi

Hidetada Kojima

Yuji Asano

A fuel cell stack includes fuel cells, a reactant gas channel, a reactant gas inlet manifold, a reactant gas outlet manifold, an inlet buffer portion, and an outlet buffer portion. A reactant gas flows through the reactant gas channel along a surface of a separator. The reactant gas flows through the reactant gas inlet manifold and the reactant gas outlet manifold in a stacking direction. The inlet buffer portion connects an inlet of the reactant gas channel to the reactant gas inlet manifold. The inlet buffer portion includes linear inlet guide protrusions. Inlet guide channels are provided between the linear inlet guide protrusions and connect the reactant gas inlet manifold to the reactant gas channel. A pitch between the linear inlet guide protrusions increases in accordance with an increase in a distance from the reactant gas inlet manifold to the linear inlet guide protrusions.

Fuel cell stack

A fuel cell includes a membrane electrode assembly, a first separator, and a second separator. The second separator has a fuel gas flow field connected to a fuel gas supply passage and a fuel gas discharge passage. The fuel gas flow field includes a plurality of corrugated flow grooves and a flat flow field. The corrugated flow grooves extend in the horizontal direction, respectively, and are arranged in the direction of the gravity. The flat flow field is provided within a power generation area, at the lowermost position in the direction of the gravity, and extends in the horizontal direction.

Fuel cell

Coolant supply passages and coolant discharge passages, for example, two respectively thereof, are disposed on upper and lower side portions of a first end plate of a fuel cell stack. Grooves are formed on a surface of the first end plate for establishing communication between each of the coolant supply passages and the coolant discharge passages. Air, which is introduced upwardly of the coolant discharge passages, is discharged to the coolant supply passages.

A fuel cell includes a plurality of power generation cells each having a first separator. The separator has a fuel gas flow field. A fuel gas supply passage extends through one corner of the power generation cell in the stacking direction, a fuel gas flowing through the fuel gas supply passage into a fuel gas flow field. An inlet buffer is provided upstream of the fuel gas flow field. The fuel gas supply passage and the inlet buffer are connected by a plurality of inlet connection grooves. The inlet connection grooves are inclined from a direction perpendicular to a wall surface of the fuel gas supply passage toward the center of the fuel gas flow field.

A fuel cell includes a stack of electrolyte electrode assemblies and metal separators. Each of the electrolyte electrode assemblies includes an electrolyte and a pair of electrodes sandwiching the electrolyte between the pair of electrodes. The fuel cell includes a coolant channel. The coolant channel is formed between the metal separators that are adjacent to each other to allow a coolant to flow through the coolant channel, and has grooves. The coolant channel includes an inclined coolant channel group in which overlapping portions of the grooves facing each other are connected along flow of the coolant that is oriented diagonally inward with respect to a longitudinal direction. The inclined coolant channel group includes inclined coolant channels whose downstream ends are connected to a downstream center of the coolant channel and whose upstream ends are connected to coolant inlet manifolds.

Growing community of inventors

Utsunomiya, Japan

Keisuke Suda