Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY
Volume 40, Issue 15, Pages 5408-5415Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2015.01.034
Keywords
Micro passive DMFC; Experimental studies; Methanol concentration; Cell performance; Low catalyst loading
Categories
Funding
- Portuguese Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) [SFRH/BDP/76063/2011]
- POPH/QREN
- European Social Fund (ESF)
- FCT [PTDC/EQU-FTT/112475/2009]
- FOCI (FEDER) via CEFT
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PTDC/EQU-FTT/112475/2009] Funding Source: FCT
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Due to the growing interest on miniaturization for application on portable devices, the Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (Micro-DMFC) proved to have great benefits. Passive fuel cells have extra advantages leading to less complex and cheaper systems. In the present work, an experimental study on the performance of a passive Micro-DMFC with an active area of 2.25 cm(2) working at ambient conditions is described. Several commercially available materials for Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) are tested including materials with low platinum content to achieve lower prices. The effect of methanol concentration on the cell performance is evaluated. The performance is compared with the one obtained using an active Micro-DMFC with the same active area. A optimized design is 'proposed corresponding to a maximum power density, 19.2 mW/cm(2), obtained using a Nafion 117 membrane, 3 mg/cm(2) Pt Ru and 0.5 mg/cm2 Pt as, respectively, anode and cathode catalyst loading, carbon paper as anode gas diffusion layer (GDL) and Sigracet carbon paper with micro porous layer (MPL) as cathode GDL at methanol feed concentration of 3 M. This result higher than the optimal power obtained with the active Micro-DMFC clearly demonstrates that membranes with low catalyst content could be used in passive MicroDMFC with success. This is an important result bearing in mind the use of micro-DMFCs in portable applications. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available