The possibility and effectiveness of using sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide as the fuel in lowtemperaturefuel cells at the sulfuric acid production site has been investigated. A fuel cell has been designedand constructed using palladium as a catalyst, which enables conversion of the energy of oxidation of sulfurdioxide and hydrogen sulfide to the electric energy. The experimental data showed that the use of hydrogensulfide and sulfur dioxide as a fuel allows achieving the power of 1.0 and 0.5 mW, respectively. Thecomparative studies with the use of hydrogen in the same fuel cell resulted in the power of about 2.0 mW,i.e. the use of hydrogen sulfide delivers a performance comparable with that of the hydrogen. The processesof oxidizing of the sulfur containing gases are used in our company in production of sulfuric acid. Oxidationof these gases conducted using the conventional technological processes. The use of these processes toproduce energy as a byproduct could be an attractive way to reduce the energy consumption of the wholeprocess. Considering the relatively high power obtained in this work for the sulfur containing gases fed fuelcells, the substitution of conventional oxidation of sulfur containing gases in this technological chain by thefuel cell oxidation, and by-producing the electric energy, could be very profitable for the energy efficiencyenhancement of the main production process. In the future work, the design and development of fuel cellcatalysts and membranes to enhance the performances of sulfur containing fuel cells will be significant.
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