Abstract
It is important to reduce the diffusion polarization at high load conditions for achieving higher performance in direct methanol fuel cell. This research applied stainless steel porous media to the flow field of a direct methanol fuel cell, and experimentally analyzed their effects on the cell performance. Two types of porous flow fields were tested and compared. The results show that a sintered spherical porous stainless steel flow field exhibited a very high effect of performance improvement which exceeds the DMFC development target set by NEDO. Diffusion polarization was especially decreased by the porous flow fields.
