The effect of ethanol concentration on the direct ethanol fuel cell performance and products distribution: A study using a single fuel cell/attenuated total reflectance – Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

• The power density increases with the ethanol concentration until 1 mol L−1.
• The maximum power density is a result of acetic acid production using Pt3Sn1/C.
• The 2 mol L−1 ethanol solution showed small power density due to the crossover.

The effect of ethanol concentration on the direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC) performance and products distribution were studied in situ using a single fuel cell/ATR-FTIR setup. The experiments were performed at 80 °C using commercial Pt3Sn/C as anodic catalyst and the concentrations of ethanol solution were varied from 0.1 to 2.0 mol L−1. An increase in power density was observed with the increase of ethanol concentration to 1.0 mol L−1, while the band intensities analysis in the FTIR spectra revealed an increase of acetic acid/acetaldehyde ratio with the increase of ethanol concentration. Also, from FTIR spectra results, it could be concluded that the acetic acid production follow parallel mechanisms; that is, it does not require the presence of acetaldehyde as an intermediate.