Cell, fuel

Fuel cells involve use of gaseous reactants to produce electricity - most often H2-O2 within a porous electrode. Secondary cells are rechargeable. The most important systems are... 

Batteries of fuel cells have been used in spacecraft but, in general, the potentially high efficiency of the fuel cell has not been realized industrially. 

This reaction has been carefully studied with the aim of obtaining the enthalpy of combustion as electrical energy, and successful hydrazine-air fuel cells have been developed using potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte. The hydrazine fuel, however, has the disadvantage that it is expensive and poisonous. 

The Hydrogen Fuel cell is a developing technology that will allow great amounts of electrical power to be obtained using a source of hyrogen gas. 

In the finely divided state platinum is an excellent catalyst, having long been used in the contact process for producing sulfuric acid. It is also used as a catalyst in cracking petroleum products. Much interest exists in using platinum as a catalyst in fuel cells and in antipollution devices for automobiles. 

Sodium terbium borate is used in solid-state devices. The oxide has potential application as an activator for green phosphors used in color TV tubes. It can be used with Zr02 as a crystal stabilizer of fuel cells which operate at elevated temperature. Few other uses have been found. 

Direct Methane Conversion, Methanol Fuel Cell, and Chemical Recycling of Carbon Dioxide... 

Another even more significant use of methyl alcohol can be as a fuel in its own right in fuel cells. In recent years, in cooperation with Caltech s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we have developed an efficient new type of fuel cell that uses methyl alcohol directly to produce electricity without the need to first catalytically convert it to produce hydrogen. 

The schematic diagram of the liquid-feed direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is shown in Figure 13.1. 

Figure 13.1. Liquid-feed direct methanol fuel cell.

Besides chemical catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide with hydrogen, which is already possible in the laboratory, we are exploring a new approach to recycling carbon dioxide into methyl alcohol or related oxygenates via aqueous eleetrocatalytic reduction using what can be called a regenerative fuel cell system. The direct methanol fuel cell... 

The concept of the reversed fuel cell, as shown schematically, consists of two parts. One is the already discussed direct oxidation fuel cell. The other consists of an electrochemical cell consisting of a membrane electrode assembly where the anode comprises Pt/C (or related) catalysts and the cathode, various metal catalysts on carbon. The membrane used is the new proton-conducting PEM-type membrane we developed, which minimizes crossover. 

A regenerative fuel cell system can also be a single electrochemical cell in which both the oxidation of fuels (i.e., production of electric power) and reduction of CO2 (to obtain fuels) can be carried out by simply reversing the mode of operation. 

The conventional electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide tends to give formic acid as the major product, which can be obtained with a 90% current efficiency using, for example, indium, tin, or mercury cathodes. Being able to convert CO2 initially to formates or formaldehyde is in itself significant. In our direct oxidation liquid feed fuel cell, varied oxygenates such as formaldehyde, formic acid and methyl formate, dimethoxymethane, trimethoxymethane, trioxane, and dimethyl carbonate are all useful fuels. At the same time, they can also be readily reduced further to methyl alcohol by varied chemical or enzymatic processes. 

FLUORINECOMPOUNDS,ORGANIC - PERFLUOROALKANESULFONICACIDS] (Volll) -in fuel cells [FUEL CELLS] (Vol 11)... 

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