Preparation of Bacterial Cellulose Based Polymer Anion Exchange Membrane and Application for Fuel Cell

Abstract

Nowadays, due to the excellent situation of fuel cell with high energy conversion rate and environmental protection, domestic research on fuel cell is endless. Electrolytes, as an important part of it, are extremely important. However, the ordinary electrolyte is liquid, which causes a lot of trouble and is especially inconvenient to carry. Therefore, liquid electrolyte is replaced by solid electrolyte in this paper. In addition, because bacterial cellulose (BC) membrane has many characteristics such as ultra-fine mesh structure, high mechanical strength, low cost and nice degradability, etc., which was used as the matrix scaffold in this paper and was doped with quaternary ammonium salt (QA) of PDDA to prepare a new anion exchange membrane called BC-PDDA. Furthermore, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermal analysis (TG), ion exchange capacity (IEC) and mechanical properties of BC-PDDA membrane were depicted in detail to explore their applicability in fuel cells. It was found that BC-PDDA membrane has strong mechanical properties and high anionic conductivity (OH-) , which reaches 0.051 S cm-1, and has broad application potential in fuel cells.