Direct methanol fuel cell with interdigitated anode for operating under ultra-low fuel stoichiometry condition

Under ultra-low fuel stoichiometry condition, direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) suffers from severe methanol crossover in the inlet region and methanol shortage in the outlet region, which results in significant performance drop. In order to improve uniformity of fuel distribution, this paper proposes an anode structure which has a dead-end fuel chamber with a porous fuel distributor, so called interdigitated anode. Comparative study between the conventional cell and the interdigitated cell was conducted with multi-dimensional model. Calculation result shows the interdigitated structure mitigates anode non-uniformity by switching fuel transport mechanism from diffusion to convection, which leads to enhancement of both cell voltage and fuel efficiency.