Analysis on the design and property of flow field plates of innovative direct methanol fuel cell

The paper uses technology of lithography process to etch flow fields on single side of a printed circuit board (PCB), and combines flow field plate with collector plate to make innovative anode flow field plates and cathode flow field plates required in direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), and meanwhile makes membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and methanol fuel plate. The flow field plates are designed to be in the form of serpentine flow field. The paper measured the assembled DMFC to achieve the overall efficiency of DMFC under the conditions of different screw torques and different concentration, flow rate and temperature of methanol. Experimental results show that when the flow field width of flow field plate is 1 mm, the screw torque is 16 kgf/cm, and the concentration, flow rate and temperature of methanol-water are 1 M, 180 ml/h and 50°C respectively, the prepared DMFC can have better power density of 5.5 mW/cm², 5.4 mW/cm², 11.2 mW/cm² and 11.8 mW/cm². Besides, the volume of the DMFC designed and assembled by the study is smaller than the generally existing DMFC by 40%.