The Application Of Carbon-based Nanocomposites In Direct Alcohol Fuel Cells

Fuel cells are in favor of alleviating the problem of energy shortage and environment pollution,due to their high energy efficiency and low environmental load.Especially,the direct alcohol fuel cells?DAFCs?,the high efficient,clean and simple devices which can obtain directly electric energy,have aroused more and more attention.The benefit of alcohol is easy handling and large volumetric energy density.The DAFCs using alcohol as fuel may solve the current energy issues.Meanwhile,glycerol,a main byproduct of biodiesel production,possesses the advantages of wide supply chains and low price.It has high boiling point,non-toxicity and high energy density compared with methanol.Hence,glycerol is promising for being used extensively in DEFCs.However,there are still a variety of reaction intermediates which block the alcohol electrooxidation.Therefore,it is important to develop active and stable catalysts which can enhance electrocatalytic performance of alcohol oxidation.The contents of paper are as follows:?1?Mesoporous biomass carbon materials?A-MC-LCR?were prepared by litchi rind after the methods of KOH and CoCl₂ activation.Pd/A-MC-LCR exhibits the great catalytic performance of ethanol oxidation.The value of onset potential is-0.63V and the higher current density at the potential of-0.33 V is 84.8 mA cm^-2.Meanwhile,the current density of Pd/A-MC-LCR is 8.8 mA cm^-2,which is 3.0 times of the Pd/MC-LCR after stability test.?2?When MnCo₂O_4.5 is added to the PdAu supported on 3D mesoporous graphene-like material?3DMG?,the value of onset potential shifts negatively 80 mV and the current density ofPdAu-MnCo₂O_4.5/3DMG increases 12.8 folds after stability test.It is found that the MnCo₂O_4.5 can remarkably improve the performance of bimetal catalyst for glycerol oxidation.