Power generation properties of Direct Flame Fuel Cell (DFFC)

This paper investigated the effect of cell temperature and product species concentration induced by small-jet flame on the power generation performance of Direct Flame Fuel Cell (DFFC). The cell is placed above the small flame and heated product gas is impinged toward it and this system is the simplest and smallest unit of the power generation device to be developed. Equivalence ratio (φ) and the distance between the cell and the burner surface (d) are considered as main experimental parameters. It turns out that open circuit voltage (OCV) increases linearly with the increase of temperature in wide range of equivalence ratios. However, it increases drastically at which the equivalence ratio became small (φ ≤ 2.0) showing inner flame clearly. This result suggests that OCV depends on not only cell temperature but also the species concentration exposed to the cell. It is suggested that Nernst equation might work satisfactory to predict OCV of DFFC