Experimental study on an active direct methanol fuel cell (ADMFC) performance with and without porous layer at the anode side

ABSTRACT

Water and CO₂ are by-products of an active direct methanol fuel cell (ADMFC) during its operation. In the present study, ADMFC is operated with an air-breathing technique. A cathode is open to the atmosphere and the anode side methanol solution is pumped using a peristaltic pump. A polytetrafluoroethylene-coated carbon porous layer is added in between the flow field plate and the current collector at the anode side of the fuel cell to determine the performance of the cell experimentally. A series of experiments were conducted for different thicknesses of porous layer ranging from 0.1 to 0.3 mm for different reactant mass flow rates and concentrations. Results show that a 0.2-mm-thick porous layer exhibits the best performance for a 3 ml/min mass flow rate of methanol at 2 M concentration.

KEYWORDS:

• Active DMFC
• porous layer
• fuel concentration
• flow rate
• cell performance
• air-breathing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).