Mass Transport Inside a Flowing Electrolyte Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

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.