New insight on the mechanism of vibration effects in vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cell

Highlights: • Proposing a vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cell coupled with vibration. • Cell performance under different vibration modes are compared comprehensively. • Through electrode current density distribution to reveal cell performance mechanism. • Both fuel utilization and exergy efficiency are used to evaluate energy efficiency. Fuel cell technology has the superiorities of long-term energy storage and instant power generation, as well as a clean and harmless reaction process. Microfluidic fuel cell is developed on the basis of membrane fuel cell, aiming at eliminating the life and cost of proton membrane by utilizing laminar flow characteristics. Microfluidic fuel cell has a broad application prospect in mobile electronic devices due to its inherent small size and higher power density. The main objective of this work is to investigate the vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cell performance under the influence of vibration in different properties. Meanwhile, fuel utilization and exergy efficiency are introduced to make a comprehensive efficiency analysis of the cell. In order to complete these studies, a three-dimensional model of vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cell is established in numerical simulation software and the vibration physical field is applied. The simulation results are compared with the experimental data to verify the reliability, after which the cell performance between the two vibration orientations under the effects of multiple parameters like intensity, frequency and phase is studied. The simulation results show that vibration has a positive but limited effect on vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cells, either power output or energy efficiency.