Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Thermodynamic Simulation

The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is considered a viable power production technology for portable electronics equipment (10’s-100’s watts) and transportation vehicles (10’s-100’s kilowatts). Since methanol is relatively inexpensive and a reformer or other fuel processing equipment is not required for the DMFC, this power system has the potential to be low cost, compact, reliable and fuel efficient. To supply methanol for the DMFC, only minor modifications to the current gasoline infrastructure would be required. Also, methanol is relatively energy dense compared with hydrogen. Methanol in plastic tanks has a net energy density of 18.9 MJ/kg which is more than twice the 8.3 MJ/kg for hydrogen produced from methanol using a reformer (Larminie and Dicks, 2003).