doi: 10.3850/978-981-08-7614-2_IMPRES028

ABSTRACT

Methanol crossover is a critical effect, which reduces the efficiency of the DMFC due to undesirable methanol oxidation at the cathode side of fuel cell. This phenomenon is a result of high methanol permeability of Nafion membranes widely used as electrolyte. Recently, aromatic hydrocarbon-based polymer membranes have been suggested as alternative membranes for DMFC due to their low methanol permeability. In this work several commercial hydrocarbon membranes (Fumatech®) along with Nafion® membranes of various thicknesses, were characterized for their sorption (water and methanol uptake) and transport (proton conductivity, methanol permeability) properties in the 0-10 M methanol concentration interval. As compared to the Nafion®, their methanol permeabilities were found to be considerably (10-20 times) lower, than the proton conductivities (only 3-5 times). The effect of the different MEA preparation techniques and the operation conditions on the performance of MEAs in DMFC was studied. An attempt was made to correlate the transport properties of membranes with their performance in DMFC.

Keywords: DMFC, Nafion, hydrocarbon membranes.

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