Membrane‐less micro fuel cell system design and performance: An overview

• Published in: International journal of energy research Vol. 43; no. 15; pp. 8956 - 8972
• Main Authors: Hanapi, I.H., Kamarudin, S.K., Zainoodin, A.M., Hasran, U.A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bognor Regis Hindawi Limited 01.12.2019
• Subjects: Automobile industry; Commercialization; Design; Electrolytic cells; flow field design; Fuel cells; Fuel technology; geometrical design; Information systems; laminar‐based fuel cell; Liquid fuels; Marketing; Membranes; membrane‐less fuel cell; Performance enhancement; Researchers; shape of channel; system design; Systems design
• ISSN: 0363-907X; 1099-114X
• DOI: 10.1002/er.4804

Summary Researchers interest in using fuel cells as a power source has grown because fuel cells are environmentally friendly. However, fuel cells still present challenges due to their performance and cost. This limits the commercialization of fuel cell systems, particularly in liquid fuel cells. One of the major obstacles is the Nafion membrane. The Nafion membrane is extremely expensive and causes the “fuel crossover phenomenon.” Therefore, researchers have proposed a membrane‐less fuel cell that eliminates the need of a membrane in the system mainly in micro fuel cells. Membrane‐less fuel cell has shown an improvement on power density by approximately 12% compared with conventional type of proton electrolyte membrane fuel cell. However, there still a lack of information on system design and performance. Therefore, the main objective of this review is to present an extensive study focusing on the geometrical system design and performance of a membrane‐less fuel cell system. It also presents the different types of membrane‐less fuel cell systems. Lastly, it highlights the current problems and potentials to improve the performance of the system. Finally, it is observed that the cost of a membrane fuel cell can be reduced by 20% to 40% compared with the conventional type of fuel cell. Nafion membrane is one of the major obstacles in liquid fuel cell; thus, researches initiated membrane‐less fuel cell to reduce the cost of fuel cell and fuel crossover phenomena. However, there are still lack of information about this fuel cell because most of the previous study only described briefly about the channel shapes of the fuel cell system. Therefore, this paper describes in detail the design and performance of membrane less fuel cell system. It also addresses the current problem.