Systemic Modeling And Design Of Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Stack

Nowadays, Direct methanol fuel cell has been greatly developed. To optimize the direct methanol fuel cell, the foundation of model which can describe the mass transfer and electrochemistry reaction is very popular. Mostly, the models are physical models, which is used to describe and optimize local phenomenon. They can’t describe single fuel cell or fuel cell stack. Moreover, they are very complicated. To design and analyze direct methanol fuel cell, a model should be established first. Among all models, equivalent electric circuit model has the advantage of simple framework and easy to compute. Moreover, equivalent electric circuit model is easier to simulate the working condition of a direct methanol fuel cell in real circuit system and other applications. Establishing equivalent electric circuit model is very important.This task came from the basic theory of direct methanol fuel cell, establishing the mathematical basis. A direct methanol fuel cell stack’s system model had been established. After validating the correctness of this model, a direct methanol fuel cell stack with4cells had been designed to validate the model experimentally. During the experiment, these results had been concluded: the system model was in good agreement with the real working condition of direct methanol fuel cell stack in real applications. Designing direct methanol fuel cell stack based on the system model had the advantages of quick response and output stable in repeat working. System model could well instruct the design of direct methanol fuel cell stack. The output voltage quickly reached a peak value and decreased to a stable value in instant uninstalling. The time of dynamic discharge was influenced by current, higher discharge current caused shorter time. But the total energy was different in different discharge current.