Preparation Of Non-noble Metal Catalysts And Their Application In Fuel Cell

Fuel cells is an efficient and environmental electrochemical generator, which can continuously convert chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy, and being an important development goal of sustainable energy system in the future. At present, it has been demonstrated in the field of civilian areas, such as automobile power, family power and so on, but the development of fuel cell industrialization has been hindered owing to its high cost and easy degradation. Platinum based materials are the most commonly ORR catalysts in fuel cells. Because platinum based materials are rare, expensive and susceptible to CO poisoning, the research of ORR catalyst mainly focus on low Pt material and non-Pt catalyst. In recent years, non-metal doped and non-noble metal composites have attracted considerable attention for their excellent catalytic performance of ORR. In this paper, a green, feasible and cost-effective preparation method for ORR catalyst materials has been developed and the performances of ORR and glucose fuel cell in alkaline solution have been investigated. The main work is as follows:1. The Co-Fe/porous carbon are prepared by annealing treating the mixed solid, followed by washing with hydrochloric acid and deionized water, respectively. The phase, structure and component of the materials are analyzed by XRD, BET, SEM, TEM and XPS. The electrocatalytic performances of the materials are tested in the standard three electrode system. The results showed that the onset potentials of Co-Fe/porous carbon for ORR and oxygen evolution reaction(OER) in alkaline solution approached those of precious-metal catalysts, and the potential for OER at 10 mA cm-2 is only 20 mV smaller than that of RuO2.2. A series of sulfur and nitrogen co-doped porous carbon materials are synthesized by high temperature pyrolysis, followed by washing with hydrochloric acid and deionized water, respectively. Excellent carbon materials are modified and the application of catalysts in oxygen reduction reaction and glucose sensing has been investigated. The results show that the synergy between metal and doped carbon enhance the catalytic performances of oxygen reduction reaction and glucose oxidation, and the catalyst exhibit high stability in alkaline solution3. The Graphene oxide(GO) are synthesized by modified Hummer method, and the NiO/GNS materials are prepared by hydrothermal and annealing treatment. The catalytic performances of NiO/GNS in the non-enzymatic glucose sensing and biological fuel cell have been investigated. It is demonstrated that Ni O/GNS have excellent selectivity, anti-interference ability and the detection limit of glucose is low to 5 μmol L-1. Moreover, the NiO/GNS have a good linear relationship from 5 μmol L-1 to 4.2 mmol L-1, and exhibit high stability in fuel cell.