Developing a passive air-breathing tubular direct methanol fuel cell fed with concentrated methanol
- 31 July 2017
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in International Journal of Green Energy
- Vol. 14 (13), 1100-1109
- https://doi.org/10.1080/15435075.2017.1358627
Abstract
This study develops and investigates a fully passive air-breathing tubular direct methanol fuel cell (t-DMFC) with a steel-tube anode and a steel-mesh cathode. The effects of methanol concentration, cathode catalyst loading, mesh structure, and forced air convection are experimentally explored. Results indicate that the t-DMFC performs better at a relatively higher methanol concentration of 8 M. It is recommended to use a catalyst loading of 4 mg cm−2. Both the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and performance tests confirm that the 40-mesh setup is preferred at the cathode. The fuel cell yields a poor performance when the cathode works with forced air convection because the air-blowing operation reduces the cell temperature and this effect dominates the cell performance. The dynamic and constant-load behaviors are also inspected.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (51475172)
- Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2015A030306013)
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015PT029)
- Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan (201506010026)
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