The effect of anode flow characteristics and temperature on the performance of a direct methanol fuel cell

An experimental direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), designed and manufactured in-house, was used in this study. The cell is of standard filter-press configuration with parallel rectangular single-pass anode channels. The membrane electrode assembly (MEA), with a suitable Pt–Ru anode electrocatalyst, was purchased from E-TEK Inc. A 1.0 M methanol in water solution was used as the fuel and pure oxygen was used as the oxidant in all experiments. Three graphite anode plates were machined with the same flow channel configuration but each with different depth of channels. The cathode was kept the same for all experiments. Polarisation curves and ac impedance spectra were obtained for varying temperatures and channel depths. To separate the contribution of the oxygen reduction reaction to the overvoltage from the anode and membrane contributions, reference hydrogen electrode (RHE) measurements were taken. By comparing the RHE polarisation with the methanol–oxygen polarisation experiments, it was found that polarisation losses at the oxygen cathode accounted for a 40–50% of the overpotential.