Electrochemical study of Graphene/ Graphene Oxide/ Reduced Graphene Oxide in Fuel Cell

Abstract

Graphene is of major importance in a very wide range of applications. Different works are under progress to make the products better in durability, performance and in other properties using graphene. In this work, the major objective was focused to use the graphene/graphene oxide/reduced graphene oxide into Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) to reduce its operating/working temperatures with better performance. As SOFC operates at high temperature that is one of the major problems, so by using graphene/graphene oxide/reduced graphene oxide the performance and durability of SOFC will be under consideration at a temperature of < 600 °C. It could provide good performance in asymmetrical solid oxide fuel cell because it can be a good potential to be an alternative cathode material for LT-SOFCs. For the confirmation of results different characterization tests are performed including XRD, SEM, DC conductivity and Fuel cell performance. In this work the newly developed SOFC materials are analysed to check the performance/efficiency and find the applications in new energy devices. In this project, I prepared 12 nanocomposite anode materials for LT-SOFC. All samples were successfully synthesized by simple and cost effective methods (Sol-gel method and Solid State). The XRD results show that the synthesized materials are in nano scale. The structure of the all samples was Perovskite. The average crystalline size of all prepared sample lies in the range of 22-300 nm. The sample LNCZ + 30% GO shows the maximum electrochemical performance as compared to other compositions of graphene Oxide and graphene. The electrochemical performance of LNCZ + 30% GO was measured with OCV of 0.155V, current density 450 mAcm-2, power density 105 mW/cm-2 at 4000C with the hydrogen fuel. It shows better results as compared to graphene because it has dual phase composite structure and since its oxide material so GO treat batter with LNCZ-Oxide rather the graphene. The nanocomposite structures help to enhance the conductivity and performance of the cell at low temperature. So this nanocomposite material which have perovskite structure can be considered as better anode materials for LTSOFCs.