STUDY OF EFFECT OF CHANNEL SIZE ON PERFORMANCE OF DIRECT METHANOL FUEL CELLS

摘要

Direct methanol fuel cells are an energy conservation technology and have attracted significant interest in recent years throughout the world. The size effect of flow channel on the performance of direct methanol fuel cells was investigated experimentally in this paper. In the study, an experimental direct methanol fuel cell was used. The flow beds with parallel channels were machined on the stainless steel polar plates. The flow beds were designed and manufactured with different channel depths, channel widths and ridge widths. The experimental data implied that the depth of channel considerably influenced the performance of cell. The channel with depth of 2.03 mm showed the best performance. Effect of channel width on the cell performance was slight in our test case. Ridge width affects the slope of ohmic polarization curve. Ridge width of 3.30mm provided the highest peak power.