Direct alcohol fuel cells have been attracting enormous research interest as power sources for vehicles and portable electronic devices because alcohols are readily available, their storage and transport can be easily handled with the existing fuel infrastructure, and they commonly have high mass-specific and volumetric energy densities. Methanol is the most studied fuel for direct alcohol fuel...

The performance of direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is closely related to its operating conditions, and there exists a specific combination of operating conditions at which the DMFC output maximum power to the driven load. Working at maximum power point (MPP) can lower the methanol crossover and ancillary power consumption so as to improve the global efficiency of the system. The fuzzy controll...

Au/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals with controllable shell thicknesses were synthesized using a cysteine-assisted hydrothermal method. Incorporating Au/ZnS nanocrystals into the traditional Pt-catalyzed half-cell reaction led to a 43.3% increase in methanol oxidation current under light illumination, demonstrating their promising potential for metal/semiconductor hybrid nanocrystals as the anode ph...

Passive direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is considered as an attractive power source for portable devices. In this study, a transient multiphase model for passive alkaline anion exchange membrane DMFC (AAEMDMFC) is developed. The results show that the power density decreases during the operation and is more difficult to maintain stable with higher current density or lower voltage. The fuel effi...

Two-phase phenomena, i.e. bubble flow in the anode and water flooding in the cathode, are critical to design of high-performance direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC). A 5 cm2 transparent DMFC has been developed to visualize these phenomena in situ. Two types of membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) based on Nafion® 112 were used to investigate effects of backing pore structure and wettability on cell ...

Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM) and Pt-based catalysts are two crucial components which determine the properties and price of fuel cells. Even though, PEM faces problem of fuel crossover in liquid fuel cells such as direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC), which lowers power output greatly. Here, we report a DBFC in which a polymer fiber membrane (PFM) was u...

Fuel cells, as highly efficient and environment-friendly power sources, have attracted ever-increasing research and development in the past few decades. Mathematical modeling and simulation are applied to examine the influence of the different physical and electrochemical phenomena occurring in the structure of the fuel cell during operation. Such simulation programs take a very long time (of t...

Fuel cells with a PtAu/C anode and a Pr-doped Mn(2)O(3)/C cathode were stacked without using a bipolar plate, and their discharge properties were investigated in a methanol aqueous solution bubbled with air. A three-cell stack exhibited a stack voltage of 2330 mV and a power output of 21 mW.