Developing a passive air-breathing tubular direct methanol fuel cell fed with concentrated methanol

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:

• Air-breathing
• direct methanol fuel cell
• optimization
• passive
• tubular

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51475172), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2015A030306013), Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan (201506010026), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015PT029).

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51475172), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2015A030306013), Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan (201506010026), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015PT029).