Abstract
Nitrogen-doped graphene oxide (N-doped GO), prepared by a facile hydrothermal reaction of GO with melamine as nitrogen source was studied as a filler in chitosan (CS) based anion exchange membranes (AEM) used in alkaline anion exchange membrane fuel cells. The structures and functional properties of the N-doped synthesized fillers (N level as high as 29.34 at.%) and produced CS-based AEMs were investigated by XPS, SEM, FTIR, XRD analysis, as well as, ion exchange capacity, tensile strength, ethanol permeability, alkali uptake, swelling ratio and cell performance tests. The as-obtained CS-based AEMs with 0.01 wt% N-doped GO filler have achieved a maximum power density of 149 ± 2.2 mW cm−2 at 80 °C, which is significantly higher than that of the benchmark commercial FAA Fumapem® and polybenzimidazole with values of 11 and 60 mW cm−2, respectively. The results demonstrate that the obtained membranes are promising AEM candidates for direct alkaline alcohol fuel cell applications.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support received in the frame of Slovenian Research Agency young researcher program (P2-0118/0795), Textile Chemistry P2-0118 program and M-era.NET program (NanoElEm—Designing new renewable nano-structured electrode and membrane materials for direct alkaline ethanol fuel cell—http://nanoelmem.fs.um.si/, grant number C3330-17-500098). The Funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST 106-2923-M-182-001-MY3) and Norwegian are also acknowledged.
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Hren, M., Hribernik, S., Gorgieva, S. et al. Chitosan-Mg(OH)2 based composite membrane containing nitrogen doped GO for direct ethanol fuel cell. Cellulose 28, 1599–1616 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03603-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03603-x