Bubble-derived contour regeneration of flow channel by in situ tracking for direct methanol fuel cells

作者：Ke, Yuzhi; Zhang, Baotong; Bai, Yafeng; Yuan, Wei^*; Li, Jinguang; Liu, Ziang; Su, Xiaoqing; Zhang, Shiwei; Ding, Xinrui; Wan, Zhenping; Tang, Yong; Zhou, Feikun

来源：Energy, 2023, 264: 126167.

DOI：10.1016/j.energy.2022.126167

• Direct methanol fuel cells
• Bubble -derived flow channel
• Optimization design
• Visualization experiment
• In situ tracking

A bubble-derived concept for contour regeneration of flow channel is developed to address the issues of carbon dioxide (CO2) management and reactant homogeneity in a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). The bubble contour is extracted from the visualization experiment based on the conventional sinusoidal flow channel (SFCH), which is used as a model to design and fabricate the bubble-derived flow channel (BDFCH). The simulation results indicate that this renewed channel shows a lower momentum loss and uniform reactant distribution. Because of the optimized amplitude (A) and period (W) of BDFCH, the regenerated flow channel displays superior cell performances under various testing conditions. The cell based on the renewed design produces a peak power density of 37.07 mW cm-2 at a flow rate of 1 mL min-1 and a methanol concentration of 6 M. The maximum performance improvement of the BDFCH is 30.8% higher than the SFCH with the combination of A = 0.15 and W = 5. The BDFCH based on the SFCH (A = 0.1 and W = 5) shows a higher cell performance than the SFCH at 6 M, demonstrating the scalability of BDFCHs. This new concept for precision design and construction of flow channels provides an efficient solution for practical flow field optimization of fuel cells.