Electrochemical Characterization of Few Electro-Synthesized Fuel Cell Electrodes to producing Clean Electrical Energy from Alternative Fuel Resources

Abstract

The increasing cost of energy associated with higher production of polluting gases is a major threat to the whole world. It is a high time to find out alternative pollution free energy resources. Fuel cell is one such electrochemical energy producing unit to produce clean electrical energy. The major challenge in the development of fuel cell is to produce inexpensive, high energetic electro catalytic electrode materials. Present investigation deals with electrochemical characterization of the synthesized Ni-Co-Fe, MnO₂-C, ZnO-Al₂O₃ and Ni-CeO₂-Cu for electrochemical oxidation of fuels like methanol, ethanol, and glucose. It has been found through studies of Polarization test, Cyclic Voltammetry, Chronoamperometry that all these electrodes performed very well with low polarization resistance, high exchange current density and delivers maximum current from the fuel oxidation. But the electrode Ni-CeO₂ has outperformed all other materials including Pt. The electro-synthesis of these materials has been performed at an optimum current density, potential, electrolyte chemistry by a series of experiments. The materials were characterized by XRD which confirms the constituent’s presence of metals and metal oxides. The SEM studies exhibits grain refinement of Ni-CeO₂ due to CeO₂ addition. The fact confirms the fine grain 3D structure account for fast electrochemical reaction of the fuel.