Development and testing of air breathing fuel cell

With the demand of energy for our daily needs ever increasing and the supply of fossil fuels (Earth main energy source) depleting fast and coupled with serious environmental effects, an alternative ‘clean source of energy’ is urgently required. Fuel cell can carry out electromagnetic reaction by taking Hydrogen gas as a fuel source and oxygen from the atmosphere as a reactant to supply electrical energy. Manufacturing process for fuel cell is relatively simple due to lack of mechanical movements and on top of that the cell also have longer operational period. Since the output of an ideal fuel cell is pure water and the emission are extremely low, thus making them an environmental friendly solution. This project focuses on Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). The Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell uses a thin, permeable polymeric membrane as the electrolyte and platinum electrodes are used on the either side of the membrane in order to catalyse the reaction. Comparing to other electrolyte which requires up to 1000°C operating efficiently, PEMFCs operates at a relatively low temperature of approximately 80°C thus allowing rapid start-up. On top of that, PEM fuel cells are compact lightweight unit; hence PEM unit tends to be the best candidate for cars, buildings and smaller stationary applications. This project is to conduct an experimental study to investigate the possibility of improving the fuel cell performance through varying the oxygen supply inlet and design of the PEMFCs. Several design of PEMFCs have been proposed, the corresponding fuel cells are then fabricated and tested. Based on the test results, the effect of these design functions on the performance have been evaluated and conclusions were drawn.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering