Development of a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with Lightweight Disc Type Current Collectors

Abstract

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·cmand successfully demonstrate the feasibility of this novel design. OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2014, 7 3137

Experimental investigations on passive direct methanol fuel cell using variable membrane electrode assembly dynamic regions by altering gasket shapes

“…Besides its material for fabrication, design aspects, dimensions with shape factors also influence the cell performance. The essential characteristics of the CC materials [3] in PDMFC are: better electrical conductivity (Yang et al , 2007); optimum thermal conductivity(Awang et al , 2018); high tensile and flexural rigidity of the material (Tsen, 2020); ease of fabrication and machinability (Abraham et al , 2021); corrosion resistance (Materials Selection for Neat Methanol Service, 2016); longer durability (Mallick et al , 2015); less density (Kuan et al , 2014); ease of availability (Sgroi et al , 2016); low contact resistance and impedance (Braz, 2020b); and even transport and distributing over an active region of reactants (Shrivastava and Harris, 2017). …”

Analysis and experimental investigation on passive direct methanol fuel cell current collectors with taper cylindrical openings

“…The required characteristics of materials [13] of the CCs in pDMFC are better corrosion‐resistance properties [14], less contact resistance over the layers of diffusion [15], better heat conductivity to optimize the thermal stability of cells [16], lower density (or) lightweight material [17], low resistivity at the operating zone of the cell [18], good engineering, machinability, and fabrication processes [19], more durability in the system [20], better tensile and flexural properties [21], even distribution and transportation to the zone of reactants [22], material availability at a low cost [23]. …”

“…It implies that buoyancy force on the bubble in the case of a taper cylindrical opening is proportional to the square of the average bottom and top radii of the cylindrical opening, and from Equation (17), we can deduce the following equation:…”

Development of a Current Collector with a Graphene Thin Film for a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Module

“…To avoid distortion due to the mismatch of significantly different material properties between the metal current collector and FR-4 substrate in the PCB fuel cell, a lightweight current collector was proposed by Sung et al [20] and Kuan et al [21], coated with a copper thin film for electric conduction and a nickel thin film for corrosion resistance, on a FR-4 plate as the substrate, via the thermal evaporation technique. The authors' research team subsequently coated a graphene thin film instead of a nickel thin film as the corrosion-resistance layer.…”