The photo is sourced from collinsaerospace.com
Fuel cells generate electricity by oxidising fuel through a chemical reaction other than combustion. This provides not only a reduction in harmful atmospheric emissions, but also the possibility of generating electricity in remote areas isolated from the common grid. However, the use of fuel cells continues to be hampered by the high temperature of their operation and the difficulty of finding materials for the positive and negative electrodes and the electrolyte layer between them, which provides a chemical reaction with the release of energy.
“The anodes of solid oxide fuel cells are made from various types of carbon materials, the activity of which is crucial to the reaction that generates electricity. We aim to increase catalytic activity by introducing foreign atoms into the carbon electrode. In this case, we introduced oxygen and nitrogen atoms in different proportions into highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and another carbon material, exposing them to plasmas of different compositions,” Stanislav Evlashin, assistant professor at the Center for Materials Technologies, is quoted as saying by Skoltech.
The treatment of the anode material was carried out in a chamber which at different stages of the experiment was filled with either pure nitrogen, pure oxygen or ordinary air. When electrical voltage was used, nitrogen and oxygen molecules broke up into ions and electrons that conducted electric current, i.e., turned into plasma. The latter, in turn, increased the catalytic activity of the anode material, bringing its efficiency closer to that of electrodes based on noble metals, including ruthenium and platinum. It should be noted that oxygen and nitrogen additives can be introduced directly during the manufacturing of the electrode material, which should facilitate the scaling of Skoltech’s solution.
