In situ visualization study of CO2 gas bubble behavior in DMFC anode flow fields

This paper reports on a visual study of the CO2 bubble behavior in the anode flow field of an in-house fabricated transparent Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC), which consisted of a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with an active area of 4.0 x 4.0 cm(2), two bipolar plates with a single serpentine channel, and a transparent enclosure. The study reveals that at low current densities, small discrete bubbles appeared in the anode flow field. At moderate current densities, a number of gas slugs formed, in addition to small discrete bubbles. And at high current densities, the flow field was predominated by rather long gas slugs. The experiments also indicate that the cell orientation had a significant effect on the cell performance, especially at low methanol flow rates; for the present flow field design the best cell performance could be achieved when the cell was orientated vertically. It has been shown that higher methanol solution flow rates reduced the average length and the number of gas slugs in the flow field, but led to an increased methanol crossover. In particular, the effect of methanol solution flow rates on the cell performance became more pronounced at low temperatures. The effect of temperature on the bubble behavior and the cell performance was also examined. Furthermore, for the present flow field consisting of a single serpentine channel, the channel-blocking phenomenon caused by CO2 gas slugs was never encountered under all the test conditions in this work. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.