Membraneless Methanol Fuel Cell

What is it about?

In this work, for the first-time carbon-supported binary Pt-Ru, Pt-Ni and ternary Pt-Ru-Ni anode catalysts were successfully tested in a single membraneless fuel cell using 1.0 M methanol as the fuel and 0.1 M sodium perborate as the oxidant in the presence of 0.5 M H2SO4 as the electrolyte at room temperature.

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Why is it important?

In this membraneless fuel cell, methanol is used as a fuel, sodium perborate as an oxidant, and sulphuric acid as an electrolyte. Sodium perborate (NaBO3.4H2O) is a cheap, environment friendly, nontoxic, and large-scale industrial chemical, primarily used as a source of ‘active oxygen’ in detergents and as a mild antiseptic. It is a peroxo salt with anionic formula B2(O2)2(OH)42−. Perborate is a convenient source of H2O2, commercially, industrially and also in the laboratory as demonstrated in Eq. (1). [B(OH)3(O2H)]− + H+ [B(OH)3] + H2O2 (1) The byproduct is completely innocuous and this stable and easily handled crystalline substance is used as oxidant in our MLMFC.