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...

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...

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...

In the current work, a comprehensive study on the possibility of using methanol as an alternative fuel for diesel engines was carried out. Methanol was mixed at different ratios with diesel fuel. The mixing ratios of methanol to diesel were 0:100, 10:90, 20:80 and 30:70. The effects of methanol fraction on engine power, torque, brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), brake thermal efficiency an...

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...