Magnesia Phosphate Cement Composite Bipolar Plates for Passive Type Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

Abstract

Bipolar plates composed of magnesia phosphate cement composite were fabricated via hot-press assisted hydration process. Techniques, including open circuit potential-time, alternating current impedance, and linear sweep voltammetry, were applied to the bipolar plates to investigate their electrochemical properties through both single cell and fuel cell stack at 70-90 °C. The results indicated that the bipolar plates achieved stable and uniform performance. Specifically, the fuel cell stack composed of three single cells in series achieved a maximum current density of 79.78 mA/cm2 and a peak power density of 25.54 mW/cm2 at 80 °C. A good and cyclable performance of the fuel cell devices using the magnesia phosphate cement based bipolar plates was observed in the switch on/off test. Then, an operation of 3.5 h was achieved under a current density of 25 mA/cm2 during the fuel availability test. The after-test investigation suggested that the surface reinforcement of the bipolar plates might improve the performance of long term operation. In conclusion, magnesia phosphate cement composite bipolar plates are suitable for direct methanol fuel cells.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Comments

This work received the financial support from the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Fund (No. ITP/033/12NP), the Young Scholar Start-up Funding of Xi’an Jiaotong University (No. HG1K025 ), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 1191329818).

Keywords and Phrases

Bipolar plates (BPs); Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs); Magnesia phosphate cement (MPC) composite; Passive type

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0360-5442

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Feb 2019

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