A novel CO₂ gas removal design for a micro passive direct methanol fuel cell

This paper presents an arrangement of super hydrophobic lateral venting micro channels, which is fabricated around the anode gas diffusion electrode of micro direct methanol fuel cell (μDMFC). Work in this paper is aimed to prove the validity of the lateral venting design. Three types of DMFCs with lateral venting design is tested by contrast with control groups respectively. With the lateral venting configuration, CO₂ gas can release directly from the anode diffusion layer of membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which prevents CO₂ gas accumulating on the anode and decreasing the anode mass transportation. Results show that the novel structure can prevent the formation of CO₂ gas barrier to a great extent, which not only avoids the anode concentration loss but also improves the discharging stability, providing a new way of design and optimization on the DMFC.