Recent progress in direct urea fuel cell

Yulia Mariana Tesa Ayudia Putri,Yasuaki Einaga,Rahmat Wibowo,Yoki Yulizar,Jarnuzi Gunlazuardi,Tribidasari A Ivandini

doi:10.1515/chem-2021-0100

Yulia Mariana Tesa Ayudia Putri, Yasuaki Einaga + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1515/chem-2021-0100

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Journal: Open chemistry	Publication Date: Nov 15, 2021
Citations: 9	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Indonesia, Keio University

Abstract

Abstract Direct urea fuel cell (DUFC) has attracted many researchers’ attention due to the use of wastewater, for example urine, which contains urea for the fuel. The main factor to improve the electrochemical oxidation performance of urea and further enhance the performances of DUFC is the use of a good anode catalyst. Non-noble metal catalyst, such as nickel, is reported to have a good catalytic activity in alkaline medium towards urea electro-oxidation. Besides optimizing the anode catalyst, the use of supporting electrode which has a large surface area as well as the use of H2O2 as an oxidant to replace O2 could help to improve the performances. The recent progress in anode catalysts for DUFC is overviewed in this article. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages as well as the factors that could help to escalate the performance of DUFC are discussed together with the challenges and future perspectives.

Highlights

Global energy demands keep increasing every year, while most energy sources are still depending on fossil fuels [1]
The purpose of this review is to report the recent progress in Direct urea fuel cell (DUFC), for the anode catalyst progress in DUFC
It can be concluded that DUFC is a greatly promising substitution for the fossil fuel

Summary

Introduction

Global energy demands keep increasing every year, while most energy sources are still depending on fossil fuels [1]. The use of wastewater as an alternative source of energy has obtained great attentions due to at least two problems, energy demand and wastewater treatment, which can be solved. Urea, which is found around 2–2.5 wt% in the wastewater (urine), is classified as an acceptable source for DUFC in alkaline medium [1,8,9,10]. Urea has some good characteristics, such as having a high energy density (16.9 MJ L−1) that is ten times higher than hydrogen, safe and acceptable in transportation as well as non-flammable and non-toxic [11,12,13]

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