White Spirit as A fuel for Fuel Cell to Produce Electricity (Preliminary Study)

Abstract

White spirit or a liquor produced by lay people in urban area in Thailand contained alcohol with 30-40%vol that equivalent to ethanol concentration of 4.9-6.7 M. With this concentration value, it is so much for using as a fuel for a fuel cell power generation. For this research, White spirit was diluted for 1 M of ethanol and then fed into 5 cm2 anode electrode of fuel cell. The anode electrode of the fuel cell was prepared by using a catalyst of PtSn. This preliminary study was revealed that the electrical power generated from White spirit was roughly equal to pure ethanol solution at the same concentration of 1 M. With using White spirit, the fuel cell gave maximum power density value of 5.8 mW/cm2 under ambient pressure. However, the chemical composition in Whit spirit contained of sulfur. It is possible that the surface of electrode catalyst was poisoned by sulfur and then the generating current dramatic decreased with permanent degradation.