A Passive Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell

Abstract

A passive direct ethanol fuel cell has been developing to be a compact and simple
system. The membrane electrode assembly (MEA) is an important part of the system. Oxygen
and ethanol supplied to the catalyst layers are driven by diffusion. In this work, a passive direct
ethanol fuel cell was fabricated with 1-5 molar ethanol directly from cell internal reservoir.
The cell performance was investigated by using two different types of diffusion layers.
The optimum concentration of ethanol was found out at 3 molar. The excess of ethanol
concentration indicated that the cell performance was decreased because of ethanol crossover. 

The result presented that gas and ethanol diffusion layers were made from carbon cloth gives
higher performance than carbon paper. This reason was that the carbon cloth was thinner than
carbon paper, therefore, it caused lower internal electrical resistance and reduced ohmic losses.
Consequently, the increase in cell performance was observed. A maximum power density of 1.45 mW/cm² at a cell potential 0.29 V was obtained.