Feasibility Study on DMFC Power Source for Underwater Vehicles

Power source for underwater vehicle is required to be air independent system. There are so many types of applications of various power sources, such as lead acid battery, silver-zinc battery, and recent lithium-ion battery, etc. hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell has been also applied to an AUV recently. AUV seems to be expected to become the major underwater vehicle in the future, but at the same time, tremendously long duration and/or long cruising range shall be required. It is thus necessary to have options of the power sources for this application. Fuel cell seems one of the best solutions for this purpose. Recently, development of DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) system is underway vigorously for the application to the mobile unit, and some are already on market as outdoor power source. This paper proposes the application of DMFC as underwater power source system, and feasibility study results are shown here.