PtSnCe/C and PtSnIr/C Electrocatalysts for Ethanol Oxidation: DEFC and In Situ FTIR studies

In the present work, we investigated PtSnCe/C (68:22:10), PtSnIr/C (33:33:33) and commercial PtSn/C (E-Tek) electrocatalysts as anodes in a DEFC. The effects of decreasing the Pt content in the electrocatalysts were also investigated. The product distributions resulting from the ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) in acid solutions using PtSnCe/C, PtSnIr/C and the commercial PtSn/C materials as electrocatalysts were determined by in situ FTIR spectroscopy. All of the anodes contained 20% (w/w) metal on carbon. From in situ FTIR experiments using 2.0 mol L-1 ethanol, it was observed that the PtSnCe/C and PtSnIr/C materials led to the formation of acetic acid as the predominant oxidation product. The best results for the EOR were obtained with the PtSnCe/C material. However, it was observed that the PtSnIr/C electrocatalyst material tolerated a decrease in Pt content while still showing good performance.