| 摘要 |
A single fuel cell (20) is built up from a plurality of plane members (21, 32, 42, 24). A plurality of such cells are stacked together to constitute a fuel cell structure. Each fuel cell in the structure requires access to three independent fluid circuits: an electrolyte circuit including an inlet orifice (88A, 98A) and an outlet orifice (88B, 98B); a gas fuel circuit including inlet and outlet orifices (108); and an oxidant circuit which may be constituted by inlets and outlets in communication with ambient air. In the final structure, these circuits must be effectively sealed from one another and from the surroundings (except for the special case of ambient air oxidant). This invention improves such sealing by preventing unwanted seepage between adjacent ones of the plane members (21, 32, 42, 24) due to defects in planeness and parallelism of the individual plane members. This is done by surrounding an area to be sealed off from another area by at least one rib which stands proud of the surface of the associated plane member and which is associated with at least one groove. When the stack is assembled the ribs are ideally deformed and received in the associated grooves, but in the vicinity of non-ideal portions of the plane members the ribs serve to block gaps through which the fluids would otherwise pass. |
