Improve methanol efficiency for direct methanol fuel cell system via investigation and control of optimal operating methanol concentration

Xuncheng Chi, Fengxiang Chen, Tiande Mo, Yu Li and Wei Wei

Energy, 2024, vol. 290, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates and controls the optimal operating methanol concentration for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) system, which effectively improves the efficiency of DMFC system. Firstly, a DMFC output characteristic model and a nonlinear stack methanol concentration model were established. Moreover, an adaptive observer was developed to reconstruct unmeasurable stack methanol concentration to estimate methanol concentration. Then, in order to achieve the minimum methanol consumption under required power, the reference methanol concentration was determined by analyzing DMFC system with its maximum energy conversion efficiency. Finally, the sliding mode algorithm was adopted to track reference optimal methanol concentration. The estimated performance of adaptive observer and non-adaptive observer for methanol concentration was compared through experimental bench data. Furthermore, the methanol consumption and energy conversion efficiency under proposed optimal methanol concentration strategy and fixed methanol concentration were compared. The comprehensive result demonstrates that the adaptive observer has better performance than non-adaptive observer in terms of estimated performance. Moreover, the proposed strategy for optimal methanol concentration was compared with fixed methanol concentration of 0.3 mol/L and 0.4 mol/L, and the fuel consumption of DMFC system was reduced by 7.9% and 30.9% respectively.

Keywords: Direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC); Methanol concentration; Adaptive observer; Methanol efficiency; Sliding mode algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544223035417
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:290:y:2024:i:c:s0360544223035417

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.130147

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().