Carbon-based Nanomaterials for Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Methanol and Ethanol

Abstract

Fuel cells attract validation every day due to the important characteristics of Pt, Pd, Ru and Rh as the traditional catalysts, including no mobile portion and energy generation, but also because they are uncommon and costly, they also produce toxic, intermediate, and slow-cinematic reactions. In this study, CoSe/CNT material was prepared which is responsible for methanol oxidation reaction in methanol fuel cell. The CoSe/CNT material has been synthesized through using of selenium (Se) along with cobalt chloride hexahydrate. For this preparation, single step hydrothermal is applied. XRD confirmed the successful composite synthesis along with SEM. x Laterally, the synthesized material has showed remarkable use in electrochemical reaction such as oxidation reaction of methanol studies. The trustable technique such as cyclic voltammetry has been applied which confirmed that the methanol oxidation is a diffusion-controlled process and forward peak current and peak potential increase with the scan rate when varying between 25, 50, 100, 150 and 200 mV/s. This technique was performed in acidic medium on modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) via three electrode electrochemical system. The oxidation reaction of methanol is catalyzed by CoSe@CNTs catalyst and remarkable current density with peak value of 6.4 mA/cm2 by using 0.6 potential with scan rate of 50mV/s. The lower charge transfer resistance Rct has been confirmed by using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and catalyst was highly stable.