From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Formic acid fuel cell is a type of fuel cell that uses formic acid as a fuel. Their low power density makes them fit mostly for electronics applications, such as mobile phones.
[edit] Differences from other Fuel Cells
Formic-acid fuel cells (FAFCs) convert formic acid and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water to produce energy. During previous investigations, researchers dismissed formic acid as a practical fuel because of the high electrochemical overvoltage shown by experiments: this meant the reaction appeared to be too difficult to be practical.
However, in recent years, other researchers (in particular Richard Masel's group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) found that the reason for the low performance was the usage of platinum as a catalyst, as it is common in most other types of fuel cells: using palladium instead, they claim to have obtained better performance than equivalent direct methanol fuel cells.[1]
[edit] Reference
- ^ S. Ha, R. Larsen, and R. I. Masel, "Performance characterization of Pd/C nanocatalyst for direct formic acid fuel cells," Journal of Power Sources, 144, 28-34 (2005)
