Today energy needs is becoming a problem in the interest of significant climate change and concern of environment. Among several energy sources, hydrogen is one of the most promising source which can convert directly chemical energy to electrical energy with high efficiency and zero pollution. Fuel cells using hydrogen as a fuel, especially, polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are an appealing alternative power device in order to transportation applications due to low cell operation temperature, low noise, high power density, and longtime operation with a single fuel injection. However, nearly despite the forefront of commercialization efforts of PEFC, there are several obstacles such as cost and durability of membrane and electrode which impacted by complicated water management in the electrochemical system. To effective durable fuel cell operations, sufficient amount of water by external humidification must be provided and the water supplied more than necessary should be properly removed. In last decade, internal humidification methods have been proposed to increase cost efficiency and effective water managements by eliminating external humidification systems and reducing weight and space of whole device. However, these internal humidification methods are still required higher performance by further evolution efforts. In the present paper, we firstly report an innovative new type of self-humidifying dual exchange membrane fuel cell (DEMFC) that presents high cell performance under a completely dry condition. In this DEMFC, two kinds of sequentially aligned electrolyte membranes are used to produce water at the anode and cathode of the fuel cell at the same time without any humidification system. The novel DEMFC system offers facilitated fuel cell efficiency and supports potential robot, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and portable fuel cell applications as well as transportation applications in non-humidified fuel cell field.

New self-humidifying dual exchange membrane fuel cell (DEMFC) for non-humidified conditions

2019 Fall National Meeting

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