Study On Development Of Anodic Catalysts For Methanol Fuel Cell

Methanol fuel cell is a new type of energy conversion equipment based on proton exchange membrane fuel cell. It has been received widespread attention because it directly use methanol as fuel in fuel cell. At the same time, it has wide application in the future. However, the lower activity, higher cost and other problems of catalysts used in the fuel cell have restricted the application of methanol fuel cell.In this dissertation we mainly investigate the preparation and the catalytic properties of non-noble metal and metal oxide catalysts. We has prepared a series of catalytic materials with different method: LaNiO3 by Sol-Gel method CuZnAl by two step method, MnO2-NiO and RuO2-TiO2 by coating-high temperature heat treatment, ZrO2-NiO by regurgitant method , Ni in AL2O3 film by aluminum anodization method, Pt/C material by reduction by hydrazine hydrate. At the same time, we test the catalytic activity by electrochemistry Circle Volt-ampere method, testing dissociation efficiency of methanol using Gas Chromatography, analyzing and characterization by SEM, XRD and Laser Particle Size Analysis.The results of electrochemistry Circle Volt-ampere tests show that that Ru02-TiO2 has catalytic activity for methanol oxidation, Ni-Al2O3 perpetrated by anode oxidation method has obvious catalytic activity. Pt/C catalyst is the best catalysts for methanol oxidation of all the prepared catalysts.For the four catalytic materials (CuZnAl, WC, ZrO2-NiO, LaNiO3), gas chromatography tests show that the decomposition efficiency of methanol increase with the increasing of methanol concentration in condition of 60℃. When the concentration of methanol is 1.00mol/L, the decomposition efficiency of methanol reaches 44. 41% according to CuZnAl which is higher than LaNiO3 (33. 13%) and ZrO2-NO (30. 09%) materials. When the concentration of methanol is 0.50mol/L, the decomposition efficiency of ZrO2.-NO catalyst material is 27.84% while LaNiO3 attaining 26.78%.XRD tests show that we have prepared pure LaNiO3 and Pt/C catalysts. The LaNiO3 powder is electrically conductive. SEM examination shows that the Pt/C catalyst is the powder of small granules and is uniform in morphology.