HIGH POWER DENSITY LOW PT LOADING ANION EXCHANGE MEMBRANE - DIRECT CRUDE GLYCEROL FUEL CELLS

摘要

Biofuels are expected to share a big portion in our future energy landscape. The current production levels of biodiesel in the US and Europe are 10~8 and 2X 10~9 L/year, and are expected to double in the near future. With biodiesel manufacturing, around 10 wt.% crude glycerol will be generated as a very cheap residual ($0.74-0.89/gallon). How to economically utilize the crude glycerol has become a challenging problem.[l] We have studied electro-catalytic oxidation of glycerol in high pH media, [2-4] and recently we obtained a high-performance anion exchange membrane - direct crude glycerol fuel cell: 265 mW/cm~2 with a Pt/carbon nanofibers (CNFs, with 1.0 mg/cm~2_(ande)) anode catalyst, a Fe-based cathode catalyst (3.0 mg_(cat)/cm~2_(cathode)) and a commercial AEM (Tokoyama A901,10 μm) at 80 °C and ambient O2 feeding; 203 mW/cm~2 at 80°C and ambient air feeding, as shown in the Figure 1.