Membraneless fuel cells using Pt-Ru-Sn/C catalysts for methanol oxidation

S.M. Nayeemunisa, S. Kiruthika, K. Ponmani, S. Durga and B. Muthukumaran

Abstract

In the present work, the continuous flow operation of membraneless methanol fuel cell (MLMFC) using Pt-Ru-Sn/C electrocatalysts with different atomic ratios were prepared by alcohol-reduction process. In this membraneless fuel cell, methanol is used as a fuel, sodium percarbonate is used as an oxidant and sulphuric acid is used as the electrolyte. Sodium percarbonate affords hydrogen peroxide in aqueous medium. The synthesized electrocatalysts were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses. The electrocatalytic activities of the catalysts were characterized by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA). During the experiments performed on single membraneless fuel cells, Pt-Ru-Sn/C (70:20:10) performed better among all the catalysts prepared with power density of 36.5 mWcm-2. The better performance of ternary Pt-Ru-Sn/C catalysts may be due to the formation of a ternary alloy and the smaller particle size.

Key Words

renewable energy; environment-friendly sodium percarbonate; membraneless methanol fuel cells; ternary catalysts; portable power applications

Address

S.M. Nayeemunisa: Department of Chemistry, Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, Chennai, 600 018, India S. Kiruthika: Department of Chemical Engineering, SRM University, Chennai, 603 203, India K. Ponmani, S. Durga and B. Muthukumaran: Department of Chemistry, Presidency College, Chennai, 600 005, India

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