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several of these compounds in the fuel cell environment. They may also be supported on carbon black. Ruthenium selenide and Fe-TMPP have been proven to be particularly effective as selective oxygen electrocatalysts in the mixed-reactant DMFC system. They have also been tested as lower-cost alternatives to platinum in hydrogen PEM fuel cells, but to-date no data have been published to suggest they are selective in the hydrogen-oxygen system and little has been done to optimise their composition or microstructure for use in fuel cells.
This new direction in fuel cell development presents undoubted opportunities for catalyst developers to improve upon the activity and selectivity of oxygen reduction electrocatalysts for the DMFC. Auckland University, for example, has a programme to improve upon Fe-TMPP, and the US Army has published patents on improved Fe-Co porphyrin complexes. The Hahn Meitner Institute in Berlin and Newcastle University in the UK both have research programmes on methanoltolerant ruthenium chalcogenides.
Several programmes have been sponsored world-wide to discover more active anode and cathode electrocatalysts using combinatorial synthesis and rapid screening approaches. Perhaps by mining these databases -looking for the catalysts that were active toward oxygen reduction but inactive to hydrogen oxidation -then the selective catalysts needed to enable hydrogenoxygen mixed-reactant fuel cells could be found, too.
Perhaps one of the biggest prizes will be for the development of selective catalysts for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). Here, the main prize will be to enable direct, high-efficiency operation with hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas and fuel oils while the oxygen entrained in the fuel-air mixture prevents the catalysts coking up. Intriguingly, there is evidence from Japan that some existing SOFC catalysts, such as Sm 0.5 Sr 0.5 CoO 3 and nickel offer sufficient selectivity to at least demonstrate mixed-reactant SOFCs.
If the mixed-reactant approach can deliver significant cost and performance benefits at the system level, then it will displace the separated-reactant approach that has dominated fuel cell design for more than a century and a half. New selective, active, and stable electrocatalysts can help this breakthrough happen.
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