Operation of a passive fuel cell under sub-zero environment conditions

Abstract

In the last decade, liquid fuel cells with their numerous advantages have gained widespread attention across the globe. However, it is a prerequisite for the fuel cells to attain an all-climate operation ability before realizing broad and extensive applications. To date, conventional liquid fuel cells always require pre-heating strategy or auxiliary heating equipment before they can operate in sub-zero environments, which makes the system bulky and prolongs its response time. The recently proposed and demonstrated novel electrically rechargeable liquid fuel (e-fuel), is considered to be a potential solution for powering fuel cells in various environments, particularly under sub-zero conditions. Using the e-fuel, a passive liquid fuel cell is designed, fabricated, and examined from 23 to – 20 °C. The cold-start free fuel cell is demonstrated to attain a peak power density of 110.34 mW· cm−2 at − 20 °C. Furthermore, to demonstrate its capability for commercial application, a two-cell stack has been developed to power a toy train, which not only demonstrates the superior scalability of this system, but also presents it as a feasible device for power generation in extreme environments.