Study on the effect of cutting design of membrane electrode on the cathode performance of direct ethanol fuel cell

In this paper, a novel tubular ordered membrane electrode is proposed by designing the cathode diffusion layer and catalytic layer. The porosity and working pressure of the catalytic layer on the cathode side were investigated and varied by the computational fluid dynamics method, and the effects of various factors on the distribution of oxygen and water were further investigated, which provided an important basis for improving the performance of direct ethanol fuel cell. The results show that among the three options of pre-cutting, post-cutting, and ordered-cutting, when the porosity is equal to 0.4 and the pressure is 2 MPa, the ordered-cutting can effectively improve the gradient distribution of the oxygen on the surface of the catalytic layer, reduce the gas mass transfer resistance, and lower the concentration of liquid water at the center of the electrode, so as to promote the electrochemical reaction. However, too high operating pressure will gradually reduce the effect of cutting the electrode layer. Therefore, when the working pressure of the fuel cell is 2 MPa, it is more favorable to improve the fuel cell performance of the ordered electrode layer. When the porosity is 0.5, the fuel cell has the best overall performance.