Assessment of innovative graphene oxide composite membranes for the improvement of direct methanol fuel cells performance

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to verify potential of GO-PEM and its best effective usage in a Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC) application so investigating the effect of this filler on cell performance, varying several operating conditions, without affecting the mechanical and electric properties of the baseline PEM. In this work, GO was added to the Nafion polymer using a weight percentage varying from 0.5 to 1.5%. The present analysis showed that the GO-membranes have higher tensile strength, greater water, and methanol uptake. It was also demonstrated that the presence of carbon compounds slightly reduced the proton conductivity suggesting that an optimal GO-content must be determined. Comparing several physical and electrochemical properties, we concluded that the 1 wt. %GO-loading PEM represents the most effective solution. Later, the advantages of adopting GO-PEMs in DMFCs were also assessed. A comparative analysis of a GO-DMFC and a standard DMFC was carried out by changing the relevant control parameters, such as anode flow rate, temperature, and methanol concentration obtaining that: a) the GO-DMFC performance enhanced when increasing the temperature and the anode flow rate; b) an increase in methanol concentration had a beneficial effect on DMFC performance only up to a peak value after that a rapid reduction was noticed. Optimal conditions were obtained for an anode flow rate of 7 µl min−1, a temperature of 60 °C and a 1 M methanol concentration.