Recent progress in direct ethanol proton exchange membrane fuel cells (DE-PEMFCs)

The correlation of electrochemical and fuel cell results for alcohol oxidation in acidic and alkaline media

“…With PEM cells the highest activity has been obtained with PtSn as an anode catalyst and Pt for cathode [171]. As a larger molecule, in comparison to methanol, ethanol possesses lower crossover through the Nafion membrane [5] reducing the power losses at the cathode, however, the Nafion membrane swells more in ethanol than in methanol solutions [200].…”

“…Sn, Re, Ru, Ge, Rh and Mo among others, have been reported to have a positive effect on the oxidation of an organic alcohols in acidic medium [164][165][166][167][168][169][170] and in this medium there is a general consensus that for methanol oxidation PtRu -proposed by Petrii et al [164] -and for ethanol oxidation PtSn [171] are the most active catalyst.…”

Synthesis and characterization of quaternary PtRuIrSn/C electrocatalysts for direct ethanol fuel cells

“…During the dissociative adsorption of ethanol on Pt sites, Sn or Ru supplies the O-species for the oxidation of CO-like species [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Jiang et al [6] established a correlation between the structures of PtSn alloy and Pt-SnO 2 , prepared by the polyol method, which respectively inhibit and allowing the hydrogen adsorption/desorption process.…”

Research and Development on Direct Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

“…However, direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFCs) still show poor performance compared to DMFCs due to the large overpotential for the electrochemical oxidation of ethanol at low temperature 17) . Figure 4 shows the cell voltage and power density plots versus the current density of typical direct FCs with a PtRu anode (3.0 mg・ cm -2 , Nafion 10 wt%), a Pt cathode (3.0 mg・cm -2 , Nafion 10 wt%), and a Nafion 117 electrolyte membrane using 1.0 M aqueous solutions of methanol and ethanol as fuels.…”