Session: 07-01 Photovoltaic & Electrochemical Technologies

Paper Number: 107446

107446 - Impact of Temperature and Ethanol Concentration on High Temperature Direct Ethanol-Based Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell 

Ethanol can be one of the attractive fuels for high temperature proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell operation because of its transportation and distribution infrastructure facilities are more readily available than the infrastructure for hydrogen, and due to its lower toxicity and higher energy density compared to methanol. However, commercialization of direct ethanol-based PEM fuel cell is still challenging because of its low power outcome and lifetime. There is not a significant number of research performed on direct ethanol-based PEM fuel cell where-in data with high temperature operation being very limited. In addition, most of the study was performed at low temperature operation, mainly focusing on material development like membrane, catalyst etc. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of operating conditions (cell temperature and ethanol concentration) on the performance of high temperature based direct-ethanol PEM fuel cell. A 3-channel serpentine flow field is used as both anode and cathode flow field. Commercially available membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with an active area of 25 cm² is used. A series of experiments have been carried-out at different combination of cell temperature (150 ⁰C and 165 ⁰C) and ethanol concentration (1 mol/L, 3 mol/L, 6 mol/L, and 9 mol/L) with ethanol flow rate of 2ml/min in the anode and air flow rate of 2 L/min in the cathode. The polarization curves are measured for different combination of operating conditions, and a comparison of polarizations and power curves are drawn to investigate the effect of cell temperature and ethanol concentration on the improvement of cell potential and power density, and optimal operating conditions are achieved based on obtainable power output. It is observed that cell temperature and ethanol concentration have significant effect on the fuel cell performance.

Presenting Author: Prantik Roy Chowdhury North Dakota State University

Presenting Author Biography: Prantik Roy Chowdhury is a PhD student at NDSU in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He completed his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), Bangladesh. Then he pursued his master’s in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in materials and manufacturing from Northern Illinois University (NIU), USA. At NIU, he worked as a research assistant in biomaterials lab and dealt with couple of projects on titanium implants and drug delivery applications. He started his PhD at NDSU during fall 2020 semester. He is working as a research assistant in energy lab under Dr. Adam Gladen, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, NDSU. Currently, he is working on both hydrogen and ethanol based high temperature PEM fuel cell.