Alkaline fuel cells introduced

Justi et al. (75) had already introduced Raney-nickel anodes for anodic hydrogen oxidation in alkaline fuel cells in the early sixties. At that time they used sintered electrodes composed of Raney-nickel particles, which are, however, too heavy and too expensive to be of use for commercial cells as too high loadings of the relatively expensive nickel are needed. Today... 

Alkaline fuel cells (AFC) — The first practical -+fuel cell (FC) was introduced by -> Bacon [i]. This was an alkaline fuel cell using a nickel anode, a nickel oxide cathode, and an alkaline aqueous electrolyte solution. The alkaline fuel cell (AFC) is classified among the low-temperature FCs. As such, it is advantageous over the protonic fuel cells, namely the -> polymer-electrolyte-membrane fuel cells (PEM) and the - phosphoric acid fuel cells, which require a large amount of platinum, making them too expensive. The fast oxygen reduction kinetics and the non-platinum cathode catalyst make the alkaline cell attractive. 

The electrodes in PEM fuel cells contain a certain amount of Nafion polymer solution to act as a binder in the ink and also to introduce some H" conductive substance to the triple-phase boundary [74]. For AAEM fuel cells, there is a need for an analogous ionomer solution for use in the catalyst layer [54] and so it is an important consideration for development of good electrodes for the alkaline fuel cell [64]. 

Dr. William W. Jacques further explored the carbon approach in 1896. His fuel cells had a carbon rod central anode in the electrolyte of molten potassium hydroxide. He made a fuel cell system of 100 cylindrical cells, which produced as much as 1500 W. Francis T. Bacon worked on fuel cells to produce alkaline systems that did not use noble metal catalysts in the 1930s. He developed and built a 6 kW alkaline hydrogen-oxygen system in 1959. In the same year, Dr. Harry Ihrig introduced... 

In the first chapter, we introduce the concept of methanol economy, as an alternative to the most popular but still elusive hydrogen economy, and we also provide a brief historical description of fundamental research on electrochemical oxidation of methanol and the development of the first alkaline direct methanol fuel cells more than 60 years ago. The operating principles of PEM and alkaline direct alcohol fuel cells are analyzed, as well as their components, configuration, and operation modes, with a final remark on the state of the art of the technology. 

V when the temperature is increased from 20 °C to 150 °C. Although these values are higher compared to those measured at Pt electrode under the similar conditions, the value of 0.20 V would suggest that Pd is highly active toward the methanol oxidation. It is therefore prospective to replace Pt with Pd in alkaline methanol fuel cells for decreased cost since Pd is normally three times cheaper than Pt. Moreover, the activity of Pd-based catalysts could be further improved by introducing metal oxides to Pd or alloying Pd with other metal elements. 

PVA has been often used as ion-exchange membrane for fuel cell applications. Poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) is a water-soluble quatemized copolymer with conductive anions (OH ) as charge carriers, which also have a certain tolerance to alkaline environment. In this part, we will introduce a typical example of cross-linked PVA/PDDA blend membrane as AEM for fuel cell applications conducted by Qiao and coworkers. 

H2/O2 fuel cell performance was measured using PVA/PDDA membrane-based MEA (1 0.5 by mass). The AFC exhibits an open circuit voltage (OCV) of 0.81 V and a peak power density of 32.7 mW cm" at a current density of 72.9 mA cm" (Figure 10.11). Although it is much lower than some alkaline exchange membranes, TMA functionalized (LDPE-co-VBC) [130] and poly(ETFE-g-VBC) [131] membrane by introducing nonfluorinated or partially fluorinated groups such excellent... 

The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to produce fuel has often been termed by some as artificial photosynthesis. Compared to the traditional researches using alkaline solution electrolytes, porous separators, and solid metallic electrode structures, there are numerous benefits to using a cell design based on a solid polymeric ion-conduction MEA with porous catalytic electrodes. In this part, we will introduce a typical example of hydroxide-ion-conduction membrane used for electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide in alkaline PEM cells, conducted by Valdez and coworkers [132],... 

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