Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Efficiency

Their main advantage is the ease of transport of methanol an energy dense yet reasonably stable liquid at all environmental conditions.

Direct methanol fuel cell efficiency. It has some commercial advantages such low price compact construction quick refueling. But real world figures may be only achieved in some years since the development of direct methanol and ethanol fuel cells is lagging behind hydrogen powered fuel. Direct methanol fuel cells or dmfcs are a subcategory of proton exchange fuel cells in which methanol is used as the fuel. Theoretically the efficiency of an ethanol fuel cell should be 96 percent but in practice at the highest power density it is only 30 percent due to a variety of reasons.

Whilst the thermodynamic theoretical energy conversion efficiency of a dmfc is 97. Bio ethanol based fuel cells may improve the well to wheel balance of this biofuel because of the increased conversion rate of the fuel cell compared to the internal combustion engine. However dmfc s performance is strongly affected by methanol crossover that significantly degrades the energy efficiency at low output power and is characterized by an increasing efficiency at increasing output power. A schematic representation of a direct methanol fuel cell dmfc which is a type of pem fuel cell is shown in figure 1.

Glaskowsky runs the numbers on a new fuel cell power supply from idatech. The currently achievable energy conversion efficiency for operational cells attains 30 40. So there is much room. Direct methanol fuel cell research at los alamos has focused on developing materials and optimizing performance of direct methan ol fuel cells for portable power devices e g commercial electronics battery replacement for the military and transportation e g on board auxiliary power un its.

The direct methanol fuel cell dmfc represent an interesting solution to produce electricity. Direct methanol fuel cells dmfc have been widely researched for applications in portable electronics due to their use of liquid fuel for easy storage and transportation compared to gaseous hydrogen. 1 2008 11 18 a m. The direct methanol fuel cell dmfc was developed to tackle the fuel storage problem of hydrogen and to eliminate the need of a reformer to convert methanol to hydrogen.

Direct methanol fuel cell. There is intensive research on promising approaches to inc.