Effect of conditioning method on direct methanol fuel cell performance

We investigated the effect of the conditioning methods on improving the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) performance. The DMFC performance after the conditioning was measured using a newly developed single cell having an Ag/Ag2SO4 reference electrode, which is not influenced by methanol. As a result, we succeeded in developing an original two-step conditioning method in which the conditioning by fueling H-2 gas is conducted prior to a conventional DMFC conditioning. The anode and cathode characteristics after the two-step conditioning were measured with respect to a reference electrode. Based on the obtained i-E curves, the two-step conditioning is found to improve the methanol oxidation performance at the anode and also suppress the decline of the O-2 reduction performance at the cathode. The high DMFC performance based on the two-step conditioning is well explained by the anode and cathode characteristics. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.