Potential of sodium alginate/titanium oxide biomembrane nanocomposite in DMFC application

Abstract

Summary A proton exchange membrane was synthesized consuming a sodium alginate biopolymer as the matrix and titanium oxide as the nanofiller. The titanium oxide content varied from 5 to 25 wt%. The biomembrane nanocomposite performs better than the pristine sodium alginate membrane based on liquid uptake, methanol permeability, proton conductivity, ion exchange capacity, and oxidative stability outcomes. The unique properties of sodium alginate and titanium oxide lead to outstanding interconnections, thus producing new materials with great characteristics and enhanced performance. The highest proton conductivity achieved in this study is 17.3 × 10‐3 S cm‐1, which performed by SAT5 (25 wt%) membranes at 70°C. An optimal content of titanium oxide enhances the conductivity and methanol permeability of the membrane. Additionally, the hydrophilicity of pure sodium alginate is greatly reduced and achieves a good liquid uptake capacity and swelling ratio. The characteristics of the SA/TiO2 biomembrane nanocomposite were determined with field emission scanning electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared, X‐ray diffraction, thermal gravimetric analysis/differential scanning calorimetry, and mechanical strength analysis.

A review on recent status and challenges of yttria stabilized zirconia modification to lowering the temperature of solid oxide fuel cells operation

“…17 Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are an electrochemical energy conversion device contracted with solid dense electrolyte and sandwich with two of the porous electrodes. [27][28][29] Moreover, the lifetime of SOFCs is more than 40000-80000 hour. 19,20 SOFCs emerge as alternative power generation system, which raise the world's attention because of the advantages of this system among other fuel cell types including the most efficient for chemical energy conversion of fuel directly into electrical power (>70% with fuel regeneration), 21 flexibilities of various consumption (hydrogen, natural gas, hydrocarbons and syngas), 22,23 superior tolerance to impurities in the fuel which unnecessary pure fuel consumption (lead to less costly and highly available) 24 , and produce a high energy range for huge stationary power plants with >100 MW.…”

“…26 In addition, compared to PEMFC, SOFCs are not depending on expensive catalysts like platinum, no electrolyte management issues like liquid electrolyte, which is corrosive and difficult to handle, and also have catalysts poisoning issues, which degrade with carbon monoxide production because of the oxidation of fuel are directly convert to carbon dioxide in high temperature. [27][28][29] Moreover, the lifetime of SOFCs is more than 40000-80000 hour. 30 Until now, there are numerous review papers on SOFCs that discuss the previous works to achieve the goal to enhance the performance of this technology.…”

Simultaneous improvement of ionic conductivity and oxidative stability of sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) nanocomposite proton exchange membrane for fuel cell application

“…All efforts to overcome these challenges fall into two main categories. The first one is related to the modification of PEMs including blending, grafting, copolymerization and cross‐linking, and incorporation of higher performance and/or lower cost alternative sulfonated aromatic polymers instead of Nafion as a most common commercial PEM . As an alternative, the sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK) is a promising membrane because of its attractive characteristics like excellent durability, low cost, and slight fuel crossover .…”

Improving the performance of sulfonated polymer membrane by using sulfonic acid functionalized hetero‐metallic metal‐organic framework for DMFC applications

“…To attain high power density in fuel cells, the membrane should possess high proton conductivity . In this regard, researchers devote much effort to prepare the membranes with high performance to replace the existing Nafion membrane, which is suffered from high methanol permeation and high cost . Increasing the number of negatively charged ions (such as sulfonate, carboxylate, and phosphonate ions) on the polymer backbone is the viable technique to attain high proton conductivity.…”

“…1 In this regard, researchers devote much effort to prepare the membranes with high performance to replace the existing Nafion membrane, 2,3 which is suffered from high methanol permeation and high cost. 4,5 Increasing the number of negatively charged ions (such as sulfonate, carboxylate, and phosphonate ions) on the polymer backbone is the viable technique to attain high proton conductivity. Conversely, it affects the dimensional stability, chemical stability, mechanical property, and fuel permeability of the membranes.…”