| A large and complex CO gas clean up system is usually required to bring down carbon monoxide content in reformate gas to acceptable levels for fuel cell application (<10 ppm). Recently an electrochemical filter has been proposed promising to simplify the gas clean up. In this device, a pulsating potential is applied to a conventional PEMFC, the configuration results in preferential oxidation of CO. The present work was undertaken to investigate the possibility of replacing the expensive Pt catalyst with non-noble metal catalyst. It has been shown experimentally that CO adsorbs and electrooxidizes on Ni/Raney-Ni catalyst akin to Pt catalyst.; It has been found that CO present in the H2 gas gets adsorbed over the catalyst surface causing delay in hydrogen evolution reaction and prevents the Ni dissolution. The adsorbed CO was successfully removed by application of suitable anodic potential. It was observed that almost 100% CO removal takes place from the electrode surface. The amount of CO electrooxidized depends upon a number of parameters such as CO exposure time, CO flow rate, CO concentration, scan rate and catalyst loading. The effect these parameters were investigated. |
