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August 17, 2009

Honey, I shrunk the fuel cell! Next-gen GM hydrogen stack gets small

Posted by : admin

Filed under: Hydrogen, GM

GM next generation and current fuel cell stacks – Click above for high-res image gallery

In spite of the cuts at General Motors over the past year, work has continued in the powertrain labs at the Warren, MI tech center on hydrogen fuel cells. Back in 2007, GM shifted much of its fuel cell work from the Honeoye Falls, NY research facility to the production engineering group in Warren. The result is the fifth-generation fuel cell stack shown above on the left. The unit on the right is the stack from the fuel cell Equinoxes that are running as part of Project Driveway in California, New York and Washington, DC. The new generation unit matches the 93 kW output of the Equinox unit but occupies the same volume as the 2.4-liter EcoTec four cylinder.

GM has engineered this new stack specifically with the aim of making it producable in volume at a much lower cost than previous designs. That means it gets a cast case with integrated cooling passages and other subsystems. One of the highest cost elements of a fuel cell stack is the platinum used as a catalyst. Read on after the jump.

Gallery: General Motors Generation V fuel cell stack