Investigation of a New Anion Exchange Membrane-based Direct Ammonia Fuel Cell System

In this study, a direct ammonia fuel cell comprising of an anion exchange membrane-based electrolyte is developed, built and tested in the laboratory for investigating the performance electrochemically. In this regard, the aqueous ammonia is used as a storage medium for unreacted fuel. With gaseous ammonia fuel, an open circuit voltage (OCV) of 280 +/- 8 mV is obtained at an operating temperature of 25 degrees C and a pressure of 100 kPa (1 bar). Furthermore, the peak power density at ambient conditions with gaseous ammonia fuel is observed to be 6.4 +/- 0.3 W m(-2). The unreacted gaseous fuel is stored in the form of aqueous ammonia and the fuel cell performance is tested at varying storage reservoir temperatures between 25 degrees C and 65 degrees C. An OCV of 110 +/- 3 mV and a peak power density of 0.72 W m(-2) is observed at an aqueous fuel temperature of 25 degrees C. Increasing storage reservoir and humidifier temperatures are found to improve the fuel cell performance characteristics.