CNR-Royal Society (RS) Bilateral Project
Title: A collaborative project to enable the development of high performance anion-exchange membrane fuel cells that do not contain any platinum.
ICCOM Principal Investigator: Hamish Andrew Miller
Project Type: International
Duration: 03/2018-03/2020
Website: https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/grants/
Abstract: Low temperature fuel cells are well known and can be seen powering buses, such as in London. Room temperature direct alcohol or formate fuel cells are ideal for supplying power to microelectronics. However, these fuel cells contain an acid membrane, which means the electrocatalysts have to be platinum-based for realistic high performance (mainly to mitigate catalyst corrosion). Platinum is an expensive and, more importantly, a scarce resource. The partner institutes for this project are world leaders in the development of alkaline anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFC). AEMFCs contain alkaline anion-exchange membranes (AEM) and anion exchange ionomers (AEIs) that conduct hydroxide anions. As AEMFCs contain an alkaline (lower corrosive level) environment, this means that they can potentially be operated using non-platinum electrocatalysts. The Surrey (UK) team’s specialty is the development of high-performance AEMs and AEIs, and testing them in hydrogen-fueled AEMFCs. The ICCOM (CNR, Italy) team’s specialty is the development of non-platinum electrocatalysts and the testing of them in fuel cells with alternative fuels (such as alcohol and formate).
Partnership: Prof. J. Varcoe, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom; ICCOM CNR
ICCOM Participants: Marco Bellini, Maria Vincenza Pagliaro
Sponsored by: Royal Society of London and CNR
Project Financial Contribution (overall): 11.860 €