Effects of Anode Serpentine Flow Fields on the Performance of μ-DMFC

Abstract

This paper dedicated to the investigations of anode mass transfer characteristics of single serpentine, double serpentine, triple serpentine and quadruple serpentine flow fields to choose the best flow field structure. In this paper, the structure sizes of anode different serpentine flow fields have been designed to make the same duty cycle based on the theory analysis. Then a multi-physics 3D model has been established and simulated to analyze and compare mass transfer characteristics of every serpentine flow fields including pressure distributions, velocity distributions and concentration distributions. The current collector plates containing different serpentine flow fields have been made by micromachining. To verify the simulation analysis, the μ-DMFCs with different serpentine flow fields have been packaged and tested. Compared with the simulations, the experiment results come up with the conclusion that the performance of μ-DMFC with double serpentine flow field is a bit higher than those with others. In conclusion, though the cell performance with double serpentine flow field is a bit higher than that with others, its fabrication process is so complicated and the improvement of the performance is not obvious. It is concluded that increasing the serpentine channels of anode flow field doesn’t have many benefits on the cell performance.