Elsevier

Renewable Energy

Volume 165, Part 1, March 2021, Pages 37-42
Renewable Energy

Acetol as a high-performance molecule for oxidation in alkaline direct liquid fuel cell

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.10.150Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Acetol can be considered as a good-performance molecule for oxidation in the ADLFC.

  • High OCP value is reported, in which we obtained the maximum value of 1341.3 mV.

  • The ADLFC experiments resulted in high power density values, 31.55 mW cm−2.

Abstract

This work describes acetol as fuel for electrochemical oxidation in direct alkaline liquid fuel cells, in addition to electrochemical studies for acetol oxidation reactions (AOR) in alkaline medium, catalyzed by nanostructured palladium electrocatalysts supported on carbon (Pd/C). The AOR’s were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry and the results were similar those described in the literature for oxidation of small organic molecules, revealing evident oxidation peaks and chronoamperometric currents. Experiments were performed in an alkaline direct liquid fuel cell (ADLFC), using acetol as fuel and electrocatalysts of the Pd/C type as anode. The results in ADLFC showed high values of open circuit potential (OCP), obtaining 1341.3 mV, considerably higher than the results reported in the literature for ethanol oxidation, in addition to a promising power density, in the maximum result of 31.55 mW cm−2, presenting acetol as a high-performance molecule for oxidation in the ADLFC.

Introduction

The device known as fuel cell is currently an attractive alternative for obtaining clean energy with high efficiency and low pollutant emissions. This device, in some cases, can be known as alkaline direct liquid fuel cell (ADLFC), which allows the direct use of liquid fuels, favoring a differentiated approach in terms of application of fuels such as the use of ethanol, more common among the studies in the green electrocatalysis area, as well as other small organic molecules (SOM) such as methanol, glycerol and ethylene glycol. However, even amid this range of possibilities, there are no reports in the literature regarding the use of acetol as fuel in ADLFC [[1], [2], [3]].

Acetol (Fig. 1) (1-hydroxy-2-propanone) has molecular formula CH3COCH2OH is a compound easily obtained from dehydration of glycerol, a byproduct of biodiesel production. Approximately 300.000 tons of glycerol are generated as a waste, but due to its high reactivity there is the formation of products with low selectivity [4].

Acetol green catalysis systems were approached by M. L. de Araújo et al. [4] and concluded that oxidation reactions catalyzed by ferric chloride (FeCl3) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), promote the production of products such as acetic acid, formic acid and CO2, but there are neither reports in the literature, according to our knowledge, about electrochemical oxidation of acetol using palladium nanoparticles, supported on high surface area carbon [4,5], or use in alkaline direct liquid fuel cell (ADLFC), as a fuel.

The aforementioned nanoparticles employed as electrocatalysts are generally composed of metals such as Platinum (Pt) [[6], [7], [8], [9]] and Palladium (Pd) [[10], [11], [12], [13]], very promising when applied to fuel cell anodes. Pd-based electrocatalysts have shown significant advantages over Pt according to studies conducted in recent years for alkaline medium, exhibiting high electrocatalytic activity for SOM oxidation due to higher reaction kinetics [10,[14], [15], [16]].

Thus, the present work studies the application of acetol as a fuel in ADLFC, through the potential evaluation of open circuit potential and power densities in polarization curves, in addition to studying electrochemical profiles for acetol oxidation reaction (AOR) in an alkaline environment, using Pd/C electrocatalysts.

Section snippets

Preparation of the electrocatalyst

Palladium nanoparticle electrocatalyst supported on carbon Vulcan XC-72 (PdNP/C) was prepared by the chemical reduction method via sodium borohydride (NaBH4) [7,17,18]. Detailed information on the synthesis of the electrocatalyst was shown in the Supplementary Material.

Electrochemical measurements

Autolab 302N potentiostat was used for the electrochemical characterization. In the electrochemical cell, 1.0 mol L−1 KOH was used as electrolyte and the experiments were performed at 25 °C in a deoxygenated medium, purging

Electrochemical characterization

Electrochemical studies in the absence of fuel are important to characterize the electrocatalyst and subsequently subject it to oxidation reaction processes. These studies were done using cyclic voltammetry (CV) in deoxygenated alkaline medium of 0.1 mol L−1 KOH, with a scan rate of 20 mV s−1, as shown in Fig. 2. The profiles show the behavior of the commercial electrocatalyst Pd/C AA and the PdNP/C, under the influence of the scanning potential of −1.0 to +0.2 V (vs SCE). Well-defined regions

Conclusions

Favorable results were obtained with the application of acetol as fuel, observed in the AOR processes in electrochemical experiments of cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry, besides to the results obtained in the ADLFC experiments, using Pd/C electrocatalysts. The polarization curves and current density curves revealed OCP values higher than those reported in the literature for oxidation of alcohols, in which we obtained the maximum value of 1341.3 mV. The ADLFC experiments also resulted in

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tuani C. Gentil: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Victor S. Pinheiro: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Felipe M. Souza: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Marcos L. de Araújo:

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), Multiuser Central Facilities (UFABC), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, grant number: 2018/18675–8, 2017/26288–1, 2017/22976–0, 2017/10118–0, 2017/21846–6, 2015/10314–8, and 2018/01258-5), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, grant number: 429727/2018–6, 309570/2016-6 and 422290/2016-5), Multiuser Central Facilities (CEM-UFABC), CAPES and the CEM-UFABC for the

References (29)

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