Researchers interest in using fuel cells as a power source has grown because fuel cells are environmentally friendly. However, fuel cells still present challenges due to their performance and cost. This limits the commercialization of fuel cell systems, particularly in liquid fuel cells. One of the major obstacles is the Nafion membrane. The Nafion membrane is extremely expensive and causes the "fuel crossover phenomenon." Therefore, researchers have proposed a membrane-less fuel cell that eliminates the need of a membrane in the system mainly in micro fuel cells. Membrane-less fuel cell has shown an improvement on power density by approximately 12% compared with conventional type of proton electrolyte membrane fuel cell. However, there still a lack of information on system design and performance. Therefore, the main objective of this review is to present an extensive study focusing on the geometrical system design and performance of a membrane-less fuel cell system. It also presents the different types of membrane-less fuel cell systems. Lastly, it highlights the current problems and potentials to improve the performance of the system. Finally, it is observed that the cost of a membrane fuel cell can be reduced by 20% to 40% compared with the conventional type of fuel cell. KEYWORDS flow field design, geometrical design, laminar-based fuel cell, membrane-less fuel cell, shape of channel, system design
Membrane-less fuel cells are a promising power source for portable applications that enable the solving of membrane-related issues, such as water management and high cost, in conventional fuel cells. Apparently, research on this system uses a single electrolyte. This study focused on enhancing the performance of membrane-less fuel cells by introducing multiple reactants that are dual electrolytes with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and oxygen as oxidants in membrane-less direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC). The conditions tested for the system are (a) acidic, (b) alkaline, (c) dual medium with oxygen as an oxidant, and (d) dual medium and dual oxygen and hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant. Additionally, the effect of fuel utilization on different electrolyte and fuel concentrations was also studied. It was found that the fuel utilization decreases dramatically with the increasing of the fuel concentration, but it improved with the increasing of the electrolyte concentration until 2M. The performance of the dual oxidants in dual-electrolyte membrane-less DMFCs was 15.5 mW cm−2 of the power density achieved before optimization. Later, the system was optimized, and the power density increased to 30 mW cm−2. Finally, this work presented the stability of the cell using the suggested parameters from the optimization process. This study indicated that the performance of the membrane-less DMFC increased for dual electrolytes with mixed oxygen and hydrogen peroxide as oxidants compared to a single electrolyte.
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