Electrocatalytic hydrogen production from methanol using fuel cells

In this study, in order to supply hydrogen gas to the devices such as mobile fuel derived batteries which need pure hydrogen gas and to reach higher overall energy conversion efficiency in this applications, the electrocatalytic production of hydrogen in fuel cells has been investigated. Considering the fuel cells as the most preferable research subject and most promised fuel to energy conversion devices, fuel types and storage facilities must be diversified and improved using alternative methods. These kind of researches are significantly important for our future energy supplying scenario.The most important problem of fuel cells using hydrogen as a fuel source is to store desired hydrogen in appropriate volume and convert energy efficiently. In this way, efficiency and cost of the overall energy conversion can be reduced to an acceptable level. In this study, efficient fuel cell applications for hydrogen production via electro-oxidation of methanol-water solution have been investigated. At the same time, the storage handicap and the high cost of production will be eliminated. Therefore, it is aimed to overcome the limitations of direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell operations is this research.Methanol-water solution have been used as a fuel source of electrocatalytic reforming reaction and then the purity of product gas, efficiency and rate of reaction were invesigated. To optimize the operation conditions of the methanol reformation cell; electro-catalyst material, concentration of methanol and current density were studied as experimental parameters. The optimum concentration of methanol was found between 60 ? 70 % (v/v) and the dissosiation potentials of methanol oxidation reactions were determined in between 0.4 ? 0.6 V using cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurement in acidic media.In designing and costructing a single reformer cell and current collectors, 10 %wt. Pt/C, 99,9 %wt. Ni ve 99,9 %wt. Pt powders were used as anode and cathode materials when manufacturing each membrane electrode assembly. In these experiments, hydrogen production was performed at 0.7 ? 0.8 V potential differences which were 20 ? 25% higher potentials obtained in voltammetric measurements. The catalytic activities of electrode materials were determined in the order of Pt (99,9 %, wt) > Ni (99,9 %, wt) > Pt/C (10 %, wt) by applying 400 mA current density and using 4mg/cm2 catalyst deposites per appearent electrode area.