Biofuels and Bioenergy

Direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFCs) have become a promising power generation technology due to the simple systems without the need of reformers. It is especially suitable for portable, mobile and transportation applications. Ethanol is an environmentally friendly fuel and possesses higher energy density than methanol (8.00 vs. 6.09 kWh kg–1). Ethanol can be easily produced in large quantities from biological processing of agriculture products and it is considered a renewable energy source. In this presentation, the developments of membrane electrolyte and electro-catalyst are presented. The design principle and the structure-property relationship between materials and cell performance are discussed. The best results from the author’s group are 184 mW/cm2 using Pt-based catalysts and 100 mW/cm2 using non-Pt catalysts, along with polybenzimidazole/graphene oxide composites. These values are significantly higher than literature data.