Abstract
Energies based on biomaterials attract a lot of interest as next-generation energy because biomaterials are environmentally friendly materials and abundant in nature. Fuel cells are also known as the clean and important next-generation source of energy. In the present study, to develop the fuel cell based on biomaterials, a novel biofuel cell, which consists of collagen electrolyte and the hydrogen fuel generated from photochemical system II (PSII) in photosynthesis, has been fabricated, and its property has been investigated. It was found that the PSII solution, in which PSII was extracted from the thylakoid membrane using a surfactant, generates hydrogen by the irradiation of light. The typical hydrogen-generating rate is approximately 7.41 × 1014 molecules/s for the light intensity of 0.5 mW/cm2 for the PSII solution of 5 mL. The biofuel cell using the PSII solution as the fuel exhibited approximately 0.12 mW/cm2. This result indicates that the fuel cell using the collagen electrolyte and the hydrogen fuel generated from PSII solution becomes the new type of biofuel cell and will lead to the development of the next-generation energy.
Highlights
It is well known that clean and environmentally friendly energies are strongly desired as the generation of energy
The red LED lamps on the front of the hydrogen gas sensor based on semiconductor turn on by approaching the photochemical system II (PSII) solution. These results indicate that the hydrogen gas is generated from the PSII solution
In order to investigate the hydrogen-gas generation of the PSII solution quantitatively, we measured the generated hydrogen molecular number per second, n, by the irradiation of blue, red, and white lights to the PSII solution using the hydrogen gas sensor based on the semiconductor
Summary
It is well known that clean and environmentally friendly energies are strongly desired as the generation of energy. Power generation efficiency is extremely high compared with the efficiency of the combustion energy of fossil fuels. Rikukawa and Sanui have shown the synthesis, chemical, and electrochemical properties, and the polymer-electrolyte fuel cell applications of new proton-conducting polymer electrolyte membranes based on hydrocarbon polymers [14]. Asensio et al reported that the proton-conducting membranes based on benzimidazole polymers become high-temperature PEM fuel cells [15]. For the direct methanol fuel cell, Goor et al reported the fabrication of low-cost and high-power DMFC, and its possibility of mobility and portable applications of DMFC has been shown [19]. In SOFC, a detailed overview of a lot of SOFC related materials and devices has been summarized by Dwivedi [22] In this way, there are a lot of reports for the fuel cell and electrolytes
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