Premium
Experimental Studies on the Performances of a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with a Novel Integrated Ultrasonic Atomization Fuel Feeder
Author(s) -
Wu C.,
Gong S.,
Hu S.,
Ye Z.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
fuel cells
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.485
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1615-6854
pISSN - 1615-6846
DOI - 10.1002/fuce.201900147
Subject(s) - direct methanol fuel cell , methanol , open circuit voltage , materials science , voltage , energy density , methanol fuel , ultrasonic sensor , chemical engineering , automotive engineering , nuclear engineering , chemistry , analytical chemistry (journal) , process engineering , electrical engineering , chromatography , electrode , acoustics , anode , engineering , organic chemistry , engineering physics , physics
With the advantages of high energy density and low operating temperature, direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) has been rated as the most promising portable energy device to replace the traditional lithium cell. However, the development of DMFC is limited by methanol crossover (MCO) and catalyst poisoning. To alleviate MCO, a DMFC with an integrated ultrasonic atomization fuel feeder is proposed in the present research. The open circuit voltage (OCV) and the polarization curves of the cell under a series of conditions are analyzed. The performances of the proposed DMFC are evaluated at different methanol concentrations and fuel feed rates. The mechanism of MCO is discussed from above experiments. Compared with liquid feed style, atomization feed style can reduce characteristic response time (CRT) and greatly alleviate MCO because the DMFC obtains a larger OCV value. It can be found from our experiments that atomization feed style can effectively improve cell performance and energy density. Moreover, atomization feed style under different methanol concentrations can obtain the best cell performance by adjusting feed rate. When the feed rate is 0.24 mL min −1 and 0.6 mL min −1 , the best cell performance is obtained at 8M and 4M, respectively.