Study of the Effect of ACL Anode Catalytic Layer Porosity on the Efficiency of a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

Abstract

The current work investigates the efficiency of a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) by using COMSOL. The set-up model takes into consideration the electrochemical kinetics and chemical reactions. The anode catalyst layers are a main element in the PEM fuel cell; their porosity significantly affects the fuel cell efficiency. We focus on the impact of catalytic layers porosity on the battery efficiency. As claimed by the results, the porosity of catalytic layer greatly affects the performance of the battery. In addition, better output performance of µDMFC may be obtained when the catalytic layer porosity is chosen as εACL=0.009-0.1. The distributions of methanol, carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, polarization, and the current density are plotted to highlight the impact of porosity on the global performances.