Construction Of Biomass Fuel Cell

Human's demand of energy is increasing with the progress of society. The traditional energy using methods are facing with depletion of raw materials, inefficient, environmental pollution, etc. Fuel cell is a new form of energy production. It has many advantages such as high energy conversion efficiency, less environmental pollution, high modularization, and fast load response. Glucose, cellulose and other biomass are widespread in nature. There is abundant energy in their molecule. It is an effective way to obtain energy through oxidation of them. At present, glucose fuel cells have many problems which are low power output, short life, high cost, and unstable current. Study of cellulose fuel cell is very rare. There are only three types of cellulose fuel cell including cellulose enzyme fuel cell, cellulose microbial fuel cell and noble metal catalyzed cellulose fuel cell. All of these fuel cells are high cost, low efficiency, low output and unstable performance. So, it is very important to research new biomass fuel cell. The study will resolve the problem of biomass energy use and human's demand of energy.This paper describes a new biomass fuel cell and its design parameters, and introduces the anode materials and method of cathode production, showing the shape of this fuel cell structure.A direct glucose alkaline fuel cell based on the design can convert chemical energy to electrical energy directly without enzyme, microorganism and noble metal catalyst. The fuel cell uses methyl viologen (MV) as electron mediator in alkaline solutions with a homemade air-breathing cathode. Nickel foam is used as anode. A rudimentary fuel cell with 1 M glucose, 3 M KOH and 5 mM MV generates maximum power 0.62 mW·cm-2 while the maximum current density is 5.03 mA·cm-2 and maximum open-circuit voltage is 0.64 V. Performance of the fuel cell is affected by many factors, such as concentrations of glucose, KOH and MV, temperature and stir. The cell is stable in a long time. It is identified that gluconate and formate are the major oxidation products in the running fuel cell.When fuel is changed based on the design, we can construct microcrystalline cellulose and reed cellulose alkaline fuel cells. The performance of these fuel cells is tested. Fuel cell using enzyme hydrolyzate of microcrystalline cellulose generates maximum power 0.14 mW·cm-2 while the maximum current density is 0.412 mA·cm-2 and maximum open-circuit voltage is 0.504 V. Structure of cellulose changes a lot before and after dissolution when it is examined by FT-IR method.Fuel cell in this paper is inexpensive. Its performance is higher than most of the existing biomass fuel cell such as enzymatic fuel cells and MFCs. It is expected to promote the commercialization of bio-fuel cell application.