MICHAEL S. MOATSDEPARTMENT OF METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING

Ethanol can be a sustainable fuel that can be stored easily and with a high energy density. Current fuel cell catalysts display low activity to the oxidation of ethanol. The aim of this research is to develop tertiary and quaternary component catalysts that display a higher activity for oxidation of these fuels and thereby promote

tertiary catalysts. These catalysts showed significant initial activity during chronoamperometry but become poisoned overtime (see Fig. 3).

While these catalysts show promise, overcoming the poisoning effect of ethanol should be researched further

the use of alternative fuel sources for portable power applications.

Ternary and quaternary catalysts have been generated (see Fig. 1). Some have shown promise as compared to platinum (see Fig. 2). It is clear that the quaternaries displayed more activity than the

Fig. 1

Fig. 3

Fig. 2

Time (hours)