Electrically insulating and sealing frame

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT Reactant gas manifolds can be arranged to separately provide fuel gas and oxidant gas to a plurality of fuel cell stacks arranged in modules within containment vessels.
During operation of a high temperature fuel cell stack, reactant gas is provided to the stack through separate manifold and plenums for the oxidant and fuel gases.
Several fuel cell stacks can be assembled as a module within a common pressure chamber and provided with suitable plenum and manifold connections within the chamber to minimize reactant gas leakage.
Separate plenums may be positioned at opposite sides or in some other convenient relationship to the fuel cell stack.
Gas plenums are positioned between each manifold and fuel cell stack for admitting the reactant gas to the individual cells of the stack.
The combination seal and electrical insulator illustrated in the drawings prevents gas leakage and electrical shorting at the plenum to fuel cell stack connection.
The plenum opening generally corresponds in size and shape to the stack openings for admitting reactant gas.
Although various shapes of plenums can be selected it will be seen that a rectangular shape can be advantageously employed in combination with the rectangular insulator and sealing frame as illustrated and described herein.
In FIG.
1 a combination electrical insulator and reactant gas seal is illustrated.
The insulator-seal-combination is presented as a rectangular frame 10 having a plurality of segments 11 interconnected by slidable spline joints or connection 13.
Segments 11 include both straight sections 15 and angular sections 17 to permit their arrangement into a rectangular frame.
Frame 10 includes at least one slidable spline connection 13 in each of its four sides between adjacent sections.
The splines allow expansion and contraction resulting from temperature changes of the reactant gas plenum and fuel cell stack with minimum lateral movement in respect to any side of the rectangular frame