Periodic fuel supply to a micro-DMFC using a piezoelectric linear actuator

A reciprocating pump using a piezoelectric linear actuator is introduced as a fuel supply module for a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack. The results show that the key advantage of the pump with the linear actuator is its ability to operate at a low frequency, which enables high flow rectification performance. At the end of this study, the pump is applied to a DMFC system to demonstrate that the output voltage of a DMFC stack remains stable with time even when the pumping pressure oscillates periodically at frequencies of a few Hz. It is also demonstrated that the maximum output power of the stack exceeds 6 W with power consuming 3.5% of the stack power for the fuel pump.