For the last decade, dimethyl ether (DME) has been considered a promising alternative fuel for direct fuel cells because of several advantages over methanol. In this work, PtRu catalysts with a wide range of Pt-to-Ru ratios were screened for the direct DME fuel cell (DDMEFC) performance for the first time. Overall, Pt50Ru50 performs best in the high and middle voltage ranges, whereas Pt80Ru20 p...

This work describes an innovative electrochemical biosensor that advances its autonomy toward equipment-free design. The is powered by a passive direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and signals the response via electrochromic display. Briefly, anode side of DMFC power source was modified with layer developed using molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) technology to detect sarcosine (an amino acid der...

Direct-methanol fuel cell (DMFC) systems are comparatively simple, sometimes just requiring a cartridge and stack with appropriate control devices. The key challenge in these is the accurate determination of flow rates mixture methanol water, fundamental understanding can be gained by computational fluid dynamics. In this work, three-dimensional, steady-state, two-phase, multi-component non-iso...

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 ...

We have proposed a unified approach to the modeling and study of developments in the field of MEMS and Nanotechnology and its application in futuristic Nano-enabled Cells. We have proposed a novel to approach reliability of MEMS enabled fuel cells. We know that reliability and accurate prediction of properties in nano domains remains a major challenge where still theories are being developed to...

In this study, TiO2 nanotubes (TNTs) were synthesized via a hydrothermal method using highly concentrated NaOH solutions varying from 6 to 12 M at 180 °C for 48 h. The effects of the NaOH concentration and the TNT crystal structure on the performance for methanol oxidation were investigated to determine the best catalyst support for Pt-based catalysts. The results showed that TNTs produced with...

We report the combinatorial and high-throughput optimization of improved ternary Pt alloy electrocatalysts for the oxidation of methanol for use in direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) anodes. Following up on the discovery of a ternary Pt20Co60Ru20 catalyst with significantly improved electrocatalytic activity for methanol oxidation over standard Pt-Ru catalysts, we optimize the electrocatalytic ac...

effect of methanol concentration and channel depth of bipolar plates on the performance of single direct methanol fuel cell was investigated experimentally. the membrane used in this experiment was nafion117. dimension of the single cell were 10cm 10 cm. methanol concentrations of 0.50, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0 molar were used. channel depth of the bipolar plates were chosen to be 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 mm, a...

Mastery over the structure of nanomaterials enables control of their properties to enhance their performance for a given application. Herein we demonstrate the design and fabrication of Pt-based nanomaterials with enhanced catalytic activity and superior selectivity toward the reactions in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) upon the deep understanding of the mechanisms of these electrochemical ...