Mixed-Feed Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

The Army's need for high energy-density, lightweight power sources gives incentive to the search for creative fuel cell concepts and approaches that can potentially reduce size, weight, and complexity. Success in such efforts would certainly have significant spin-off opportunities in the commercial sector, such as in medical devices, computer hardware, and recreational needs. The mixed reactant feed approach in direct-methanol fuel cells has attractive potential in light of the fact that it could reduce size and weight associated with fluid delivery devices, manifolding, and sealing. The proposed project is intended to explore the cell/stack and system design opportunities associated with mixed-feed, with the objective of laying the groundwork for substantial improvement in size and weight parameters for the system power and energy required. The overall technical goal is to meet the Army's size and weight requirements for a 20-watt, 1-kWh power source during Phase II. The objectives of the project are: a) to identify and deploy selective cathode catalysts/electrodes that demonstrate enhanced activity/performance in methanol-air mixed-feed fuel cell stacks and b) to investigate, optimize, and implement a novel stack design concept that yields substantially reduced size and weight in relation to those of conventional DMFC stacks