Return to search

Development and Fabrication Studies of Low Cost Air breathing Portable DMFC Stacks

There are several disadvantages in conventional unipolar/bipolar plates such as cost expensive, weight heavy and volume large. Therefore, it is difficult in making use conventional unipolar/bipolar plates to portable fuel cells. With a new heterogeneous carbon fiber bipolar plate, pumpless and air-breathing design and in cooperating with a special MEA, portable fuel cell stacks developed in our lab have made portable applications to be possible. The structure of the DMFC stack made with the new carbon fiber bipolar plate is much more simple and weight-light than the other designs.
A two-layer 16-Cell DMFC Stack had been designed and made by using the heterogeneous carbon fiber monopolar plates developed in our fuel cell laboratory. With this design, the methanol solution can be directly stored in the anode chamber which can store fuel 17 ml and does not need any auxiliary equipment, so it easy to apply to the portable power source. Not including fuel, total weight of stack is only 50g and the volume is 75 cm3. The 16 cell stack includes two pieces of 117 membrane, 16 anode electrodes loading Pt/Ru 5 mg/cm2 and 16 cathode Pt loading 5 mg/cm2. Each single cell electrode area is about 3.5 cm², so the total electrode area of the 16-cell stack is 56cm2. With methanol concentration 3 M, pumpless, air-breathing, and room temperature, the largest output power density of the fuel cell can reach 10.3 mW/cm², and the total power can reach 578 mW in this stage. The performance of the stack will be further improved in the next stage.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0910107-160239
Date10 September 2007
CreatorsHung, Chia-lung
ContributorsLee, Ming-San, Chen, Long-Jeng, Liu, Chorng-Fuh, Wei, Peng-Sheng
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0910107-160239
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

Page generated in 0.003 seconds