Polymer Electrolyte Membranes and Their Applications in Methanol Fuel Cells

Depleting energy supplies, rapid population growth, and environmental concerns confront developed nations with new challenges. Adopting and implementing renewable alternative energy sources remains a requisite strategy for addressing these issues. As a pillar of future clean energy production for portable, transit, and small stationary power applications, the polyelectrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) employs renewable, and eco-friendly fuels such as hydrogen or methanol. The PEMFC plays a prominent role in tackling the environmental problems associated with fossil fuels consumption. Direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), which employs methanol as a fuel source, is considered a suitable energy generator among the various PEMFCs. This is due to its higher energy density, versatility in the handling of liquid fuel, lightweight structure, more straightforward architecture, and ease to scale-up for a variety of applications. In such a structure, which converts the chemical energy of methanol into electricity through electrochemical reactions, polyelectrolyte membrane (PEM) plays an important role in transferring protons from the anode to the cathode side, hence controlling the efficiency of the cell. Due to the importance of fuel cell technology, especially DMFCs, as power generation systems, and also due to the significant role of polymer electrolyte membranes in determining the efficiency of the cells, this book first identifies the fuel cell technology. It also discusses the structure of DMFCs. In the next step, this book focuses on the structure of PEMs and their recent developments.