A one-dimensional model is developed for alkaline direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFC) by considering the complicated physicochemical processes, including mass transport, charge transport, and electrochemical reactions. The model is validated against experiments and shows good agreement with the literature data. The model is then used to investigate the effects of various operating and structural design parameters on the cell performance. Numerical results show that the cell performance increases with increasing the ethanol concentration from 1.0 M to 3.0 M and with increasing the OH- concentration from 1.0 M to 5.0 M. The model is further applied to the study of the effect of the design of the anode diffusion layer (DL) on the performance; it is shown that the cell performance improves when the porosity of the DL is increased and the thickness of the DL is decreased. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.