A Novel Design of High-Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Acetone Fuel Cell Sensor

Abstract

In this work, based on the principle of high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HT-PEMFC), a first-ever acetone fuel cell sensor (AFCS) is proposed and developed to detect acetone vapor in the environment and human breath for the safety control during industrial processing and the health monitoring and diagnosis for diabatic patients. The newly-developed HT-PEM-ACFS has the intrinsic advantages of insensitivity to relative humidity, excellent water management, and high sensor response and sensitivity due to the use of phosphoric acid (H3PO4) doped porous polybenzimidazole (pPBI) membrane and relatively-high operational temperature (100-180 °C). The optimal HT-PEM-ACFS employs 100-μm-thick pPBI membrane doped in 5 mol L-1 H3PO4 for 72 hours as HT-PEM, showing the best sensor response to acetone vapor at 140 °C. Moreover, the HT-PEM-ACFS with acid-doped pPBI membrane demonstrates superior sensitivity, linearity, and selectivity to acetone over alcohol as opposed to the sensor employed acid-doped solid PBI membrane. The promising sensor performance not merely proves the concept of HT-PEM-ACFS, but also highlights HT-PEM-AFCS as the next-generation sensor technology for acetone vapor measurement in the environment.