A high-performance ethanol-hydrogen peroxide fuel cell

In conventional ethanol-hydrogen peroxide fuel cells, the cathode potential is created by the reduction reaction of hydrogen peroxide. In this work, we propose to create the cathode potential by introducing a redox couple to the cathode while using hydrogen peroxide to chemically charge the redox ions. The idea not only completely eliminates the mixed-potential issue associated with the direct reduction of hydrogen peroxide, but also enables faster cathodic electrochemical kinetics with no catalysts. Experimentally, it is demonstrated that the ethanol-hydrogen peroxide fuel cell with a redox couple of V( iv )/V( v ) yields a peak power density of 450 mW cm −2 at 60 °C, which is 87.5% higher than that of the conventional cell with direct reduction of hydrogen peroxide. We propose to create the cathode potential by introducing a redox couple to the cathode while using hydrogen peroxide to chemically charge the redox ions, which eliminates the mixed potential associated with direct reduction of hydrogen peroxide.