Significantly enhanced performance of direct methanol fuel cells at elevated temperatures

Abstract

The performance of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) is constrained by the sluggish kinetics of methanol oxidation reaction. Increasing the temperature can effectively increase the methanol oxidation kinetics, offering new opportunities to achieve high performance. Here we studied the performance of DMFCs based on the newly developed silica impregnated phosphoric acid doped polybenzimidazole (PA/PBI/SiO2) composite membrane. The composite membrane shows a proton conductivity of 2.9–4.1 × 10−2 S cm−1 at temperatures between 200 and 250 °C and is stable at high temperatures. The cells using the composite membrane successfully delivered a peak power density of 136 mW cm−2 and 237 mW cm−2 at 260 °C using the Pt/C and PtRu/C as the anode catalysts, respectively. The cells with the PA/PBI/SiO2 composite membrane show a much higher power output than that with conventional PA/PBI membranes. Most importantly, the results demonstrate that there exists a distinct transition temperature around 205 °C for the performance of DMFCs. Above this transition temperature, the increase in power density with temperature is 208 mWcm−2/100 °C, which is more than 4 times higher than 50 mWcm−2/100 °C obtained at temperatures below 205 °C. The presence of such transition temperature for DMFCs is most likely due to the significantly enhanced kinetics of the methanol oxidation reaction at elevated temperatures. Operation at elevated temperatures, i.e., above 205 °C, is most effective to significantly enhance the power performance of DMFCs.