SGER: Improved Air Cathodes

The goal of this project is to design, demonstrate and evaluate a new kind of alkaline fuel cell (AFC).

There are several types of fuel cells. Among the most popular operating on H2/O2 as fuels are: the widely researched Proton Exchange Membrane as an electrolyte (PEMFC); the alkaline fuel cell (AFC) that uses an alkaline electrolyte; the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that uses solid oxides as electrolytes and operates at very high temperatures (>>100 oC); the phosphoric acid electrolyte fuel cell that operates at high temperature (>100 oC) and has the problem of catalyst instability; and the molten carbonate electrolyte fuel cell that operates at very high temperature (>>100 oC) and presents a problem of material stability. The most promising candidates to operate at lower temperatures are PEMFCs and AFCs.

No one has demonstrated in the open literature successful stable hydrogen-air operation of an AFC without replacement of electrolyte (every 1000 hours of operation). The choice of AFCs solves the problem of expensive catalysts. Therefore, to improve the performances of AFCs when using 'dirty' fuel (such as reformed methanol), the solution is to design new electrodes that allow the AFC to run with 'dirty' fuel and to optimize the alkaline electrolyte concentration such that will yield optimal operation outputs-high efficiency for long time by using 'dirty' fuel operating at ambient conditions (25 oC and atmospheric pressure), and with affordable materials as catalytic metals (not highly priced metals).

This project will design AFC electrodes that operate with 'dirty' fuel for long periods and at high levels of efficiency, using a combination of new technology derived from a study of chelates and of older but less-known technology derived from earlier work at Allis-Chalmers and Exxon.