N2 - The influences of various operating conditions including cathode inlet air flow rate, electrolyte temperature and fuel particles size on the performance of the direct carbon fuel cell DCFC were presented and discussed in this paper. The experimental results indicated that the cell performance was enhanced with increases of the cathode inlet gas flow rate and cell temperature. Binary alkali hydroxide mixture (NaOH-LiOH, 90-10 mol%) was used as electrolyte and the biochar of apple tree origin carbonized at 873 K was used as fuel. Low melting temperature of the electrolyte and its good ionic conductivity enabled to operate the DCFC at medium temperatures of 723-773 K. The highest current density (601 A m−2) was obtained for temperature 773 K and air flow rate 8.3×106 m3s−1. Itwas shown that too low or too high air flow rates negatively affect the cell performance. The results also indicated that the operation of the DCFC could be improved by proper selection of the fuel particle size. L1 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/94485/PDF/12_paper.pdf L2 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/94485 PY - 2013 IS - No 4 December EP - 197 DO - 10.2478/aoter-2013-0037 KW - Direct carbon fuel cell KW - Biochar KW - Molten hydroxide electrolyte KW - Carbon anode KW - Air cathode A1 - Kacprzak, Andrzej A1 - Kobyłecki, Rafał A1 - Bis, Zbigniew PB - The Committee of Thermodynamics and Combustion of the Polish Academy of Sciences and The Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery Polish Academy of Sciences DA - 2013 T1 - The effects of operating conditions on the performance of a direct carbon fuel cell SP - 187 UR - http://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/94485 T2 - Archives of Thermodynamics