Liquid Fuel Cells for Sustainable Energy Production

Liquid fuel cells, which promise to be a clean and efficient energy production technology, have recently attracted worldwide attention, primarily because liquid fuels offer many unique physicochemical properties including high energy density and ease of transportation, storage as well as handling. However, conventional liquid fuel cells, which use acid proton exchange membranes and precious metal catalysts, result in rather low performance. In our research, we use alkaline anion exchange membranes as the solid electrolyte. It is demonstrated that the change from the acid membrane to an alkaline one leads to a significant performance boost. In addition, we also develop a novel hybrid fuel cell, which consists of an alkaline anode and an acid cathode. To further optimize and improve the performance, we develop an integrated model for the liquid fuel cell system. This high performance is attributed not only to the unique design, but also to the use of the integrated model.