Numerical Simulation And Experiment Research Of The Performance Of A Novel Microfluidic Fuel Cell

Miniature fuel cells have shown great promise as power sources for small-scale applications due to their inherently high power and energy density.However,scaling down conventional fuel cell technologies to produce miniature power sources has several challenges.A recent,novel fuel cell architecture based on microfluidic lab-on-chip devices has shown great promise in addressing many of the above problems,it is microfluidic fuel cell.In this dissertation,a new type of structure of microfluidic fuel cell are analyzed,tested and verified systematically by adopting the combination means of numerical calculation and battery fabrication and experiment.Study results showed that the structure of the microfluidic fuel cells,compared with the published structure today,has a good performance and possesses some unique advantages.The main research work is as follows.(1)Designed a new type of microfluidic fuel cell structure,targeted to active control of the depletion boundary layers and inter-diffusive mixing which commonly exist in the traditional microfluidic fuel cells.(2)Single-phase flow numerical calculation under constant temperature and steady state on different work conditions is carried out.Through the analysis of the theory of the working process of the battery,the three-dimensional numerical model is established.Mainly calculations are focus on the performance of the battery under different inlet flow rates.Obtain distributions of reacting substances,stress field,velocity field and electric field inside the battery under different working conditions,explaining the battery's advantage on the control of cross diffusion and boundary depletion layer;Calculations also provide quantitative evaluation means of battery performance,including polarization curve,power density and fuel utilization.(3)Processing battery,carried on the experimental study.Using the lithography technology to fabricate fuel cell.Experiments of Battery's the performance of different inlet flow rate and matter concentration are conducted,polarization curve and power density curve obtained through experiments are compared with the numerical calculations results.Proceed comparative analysis,possible causes and corresponding improvement measures are put forward.The battery's structure in this paper,material are transported to porous reaction area by the form of convection through multip-inlets,not only to strengthen the material transportation,and makes the average distribution of the material and effective utilization of reaction area which improve battery performance.Refining fuel architecture and operating conditions will promote fuel cell's performance.