Polarization and Electrochemical Studies for Ethanol Liquid Fuel Cell

Abstract

This thesis is dedicated to the synthesis of silicon carbide and silicon carbide based composite as an effective anode material in ethanol liquid fuel cell. As fuel cell is an efficient device for its clean energy production. To enhance the efficiency of such type of clean energy devices an efficient electrode material is required for its proper working. In fuel cell there is also need to study the behaviour of liquid fuel as well as their performance by using proper electrode material and catalyst. Therefore in this research work Si-C composite was made by sol-gel method, SiC by hydrothermal technique while the catalyst material LiNiO was fabricated by solid state reaction method. To analyze the structural properties of the synthesized samples XRD has been carried out and find out the two phases in the case of Si-C composite and one phase in the case of SiC with average 39.40nm and 41.34nm respectively. SEM was carried out to study the morphological behaviour of the prepared samples and the SEM micrographs depicts that all the particles are homogenous and possess the porous structure which is the requirement of best anode material. Through FTIR spectra different types of stretching and vibrational bonding was studied and find out that there is different kinds of bonding like Si-O-Si, Si-C, C=O and Si-OH present in the prepared samples. For remaining characterizations the different compositions of Li0.2Ni0.8O+SiC was prepared. Conductivity and electrical bandgap for all compositions was measured by using 4-point probe and the maximum conductivity was observed by the LiNiO + SiC (1:0.3) and find out to be 1.34 Scm-1 at 6500C and the electrical bandgap is calculated to be 0.84 eV. Then the three layer fuel cell was fabricated by using prepared compositions as anode and SDC as electrolyte and LNCZ as cathode. The highest power density was calculated to be 30.46 (mWCm-2) by using ethanol as a fuel and 37.12(mWCm-2) by using hydrogen as a fuel.