Alkaline nonplatinum cell

A considerable contribution to the development of alkaline fuel cells was made toward the end of the 1950s by the German physicists Eduard Justi and his coworkers. They made electrodes with nonplatinum catalysts, the so-called Raney-type skeleton metals nickel for the hydrogen side and silver for the oxygen side (Justi et al. 1954). The catalysts were included into a matrix of carbonyl nickel. These electrodes were named Doppel-Skelett (DSK) = double skeleton electrodes (Justi and Winsel, 1962). 

For the electrooxidation of alcohols in alkaline medium (see Section 6.4), Shen et al. (2006) suggested a platinum or palladium catalyst promoted with 25 wt% of nickel oxide NiO deposited on a carbon-black support. According to then-data, this additive substantially accelerates the electrooxidation of methanol in an alkaline medium. Tarasevich et al. (2005) suggested a Ru-Ni catalyst deposited on carbon black for the electrooxidation of ethanol in an alkaline medium it is considerably more active than pure ruthenium. Under the operating conditions of fuel cells in acidic media as well as in contact with proton-conducting membranes of the Nafion type, the use of nonplatinum catalysts is highly restricted, owing to corrosion problems. 

Other examples include alkaline-type DEFC with Mg-Al nonplatinum catalysts [60], and solid oxide fuel cell running on ethanol fuel [61]. Recently, palladium-based catalyst has been identified as one of promising areas of research. The mechanism of the ethanol oxidation... 

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