Due to several apparent advantages over methanol, dimethyl ether (DME) has been viewed as a promising alternative fuel for direct fuel cell technology. Similar to methanol, DME oxidation requires a surface oxidant, such as OH, for the removal of adsorbed CO. Consequently, the reaction occurs at much faster rates on binary PtRu catalysts than Pt alone. In this work, PtRu catalysts with a wide va...

In the past few years, the interest in the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) has increased dramatically, as it has very advantageous features as a mobile source of electrical energy. Its fuel methanol is easy to store and to handle and has a high energy density. These advantages over hydrogen-fed PEMFCs (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells) have resulted in first commercial products (e.g. fr...

We report here a novel proton exchange membrane with remarkably high methanol-permeation resistivity and excellent proton conductivity enabled by carefully designed self-assembled ionic conductive channels. A direct methanol fuel cell utilizing the membrane performs well with a 20 M methanol solution, very close to the concentration of neat methanol.

A deep analysis of the Fuel Cells technologies state of the art has been done in this article. After a general description of the fuel cell base structure the six most important fuel cell technologies Polymeric Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC), Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), Alkaline Fuel Cells (AFC), Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell (PAFC), Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC), Solid Oxide Fu...