Fabrication and Test of an Air-Breathing Microfluidic Fuel Cell

Energies

Jin-Cherng Shyu³  Po-Yan Wang³  Chien-Liang Lee¹  Sung-Chun Chang⁴  Tsung-Sheng Sheu⁵  Chun-Hsien Kuo²  Kun-Lung Huang¹  Zi-Yi Yang² 

[1]Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan

[2] E-Mails:

[3]Department of Mold and Die Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan

[4] E-Mails:

[5]Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan

[6] E-Mail:

[7]Material and Chemical Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu 31040, Taiwan

[8] E-Mail:

[9]Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.O.C. Military Academy, Kaohsiung 83059, Taiwan

[10] E-Mail:

关键词: air-breathing;    fuel cell;    formic acid;    bubble resident time;   

DOI  :  10.3390/en8032082

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

An air-breathing direct formic acid microfluidic fuel cell, which had a self-made anode electrode of 10 mg/cm² Pd loading and 6 mg/cm² Nafion content, was fabricated and tested. The microfluidic fuel cell was achieved by bonding a PDMS microchannel that was fabricated by a soft-lithography process and a PMMA sheet that was machined by a CO₂ laser for obtaining 50 through holes of 0.5 mm in diameter. Formic acid of 0.3 M, 0.5 M, and 1.0 M, mixed with 0.5-M H₂SO₄, was supplied at a flow rate ranging from 0.1 to 0.7 mL/min as fuel. The maximum power density of the fuel cell fed with 0.5-M HCOOH was approximately 31, 32.16, and 31 mW/cm² at 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7 mL/min, respectively. The simultaneous recording of the flow in the microchannel and the current density of the fuel cell at 0.2 V, within a 100-s duration, showed that the period and amplitude of each unsteady current oscillation were associated with the bubble resident time and bubble dimension, respectively. The effect of bubble dimension included the longitudinal and transverse bubble dimension, and the distance between two in-line bubbles as well.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.