Abstract
The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) adopts methanol solution as a fuel suitable for low power portable applications. A miniature, lightweight, passive air-breathing design is therefore desired. This paper presents a novel planar disc-type DMFC with multiple cells containing a novel developed lightweight current collector at both the anode and cathode sides. The present lightweight current collector adopts FR4 Glass/Epoxy as the substrate with the current collecting areas located at the corresponding membrane electrolyte assembly (MEA) areas. The current collecting areas are fabricated by sequentially coating a corrosion resistant layer and electrical conduction layer via the thermal evaporation technique. The anode current collector has carved flow channels for fuel transport and production. The cathode current collector has drilled holes for passive air breathing. In order to ensure feasibility in the present concept a 3-cell prototype DMFC module with lightweight disc type current collectors is designed and constructed. Experiments were conducted to measure the cell performance. The results show that the highest cell power output is 54.88 mW·cm−2 and successfully demonstrate the feasibility of this novel design.
Highlights
The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) has many advantages, such as high efficiency, low pollution and noise, easy portability and handling system simplicity and near-room operating temperature
To determine the electrical resistivity of the current collectors of different metal thin film thicknesses made through the thermal evaporation processes, four points were selected and measured for the single-cell DMFC collector
This paper describes a three-cell disc-type DMFC module featuring lightweight current collectors developed in the laboratory
Summary
The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) has many advantages, such as high efficiency, low pollution and noise, easy portability and handling system simplicity and near-room operating temperature. The current collector/bipolar plate plays a major role for fuel cells in terms of weight, volume and cost. As graphite has superior electrical conductivity and chemical stability, it is widely adopted as the bipolar plate material, but graphite has the disadvantages of being brittle, expensive, difficult to machine and bulky, such that it might limit miniaturization in portable applications. Many researchers are committed to developing current collectors/bipolar plates using new materials, geometry, fabrication, processing materials and methods [3,4,5]
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