Performance Improvement in Direct Methanol Fuel Cell by Porous Stainless Steel Separators

摘要

It is important to reduce the diffusion polarization at high load conditions for achieving higher performance in direct methanol fuel cells. This research applied the porous stainless steel to the cell separators of a direct methanol fuel cell, and experimentally analyzed its effect on the diffusion polarization and performance. The results show that porous separator enables direct methanol fuel cells to operate with higher out put than channel type separator especially at higher current densities. It was also shown that the effect of porous separator is larger on cathode than anode.