Alkaline direct oxidation fuel cell with non-platinum catalysts capable of converting glucose to electricity at high power output

Glucose is a potential fuel for fuel cells because it is renewable, abundant, non-toxic, and easy in handle and store. Conventional glucose fuel cells that use enzymes and micro-organisms as the catalyst are limited by their extremely low power output and rather short durability. In this work, a direct glucose fuel cell that uses an anion-exchange membrane and in-house non-platinum electrocatalysts is developed. It is shown that this type of direct glucose fuel cell with a relatively cheap membrane and catalysts can result in a maximum power density as high as 38 mW cm−2 at 60 °C. The high performance is attributed mainly to the increased kinetics of both the glucose oxidation reaction and the oxygen reduction reaction rendered by the alkaline medium with the anion-exchange membrane.