Mass Transport Inside a Flowing Electrolyte Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Available to Purchase

In this work, analytical mass transfer models are developed for two different types of Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs). One type is a conventional assembly with a proton exchange membrane (PEM) and the other utilizes a flowing electrolyte in addition to a PEM to reduce methanol crossover. These models are used to predict methanol crossover behaviour that is a major issue affecting the efficiencies of PEM-DMFCs. It is shown that using flowing electrolyte DMFCs can lead to a significant decrease in methanol crossover with a corresponding increase in electrical efficiency of the cell. Combined with the experiments carried out in a previous work, the simulation showed significant efficiency improvements when using a flowing electrolyte DMFC compared to a traditional PEM assembly.