Laboratory Preparation of Multi-walled carbon nanotube-supported Pt-Ru anode catalyst and investigation of its performance in methanol oxidation in fuel cell

Fuel cells are clean, efficient, and noiseless. There is increasing interest in the development of fuel cell systems due to thir profound commercial applications. Particularly, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) can be used as dependable and long-lasting portable power sources to replace batteries, which suffer from low energy capacities and short runtime, in various electronic equipments. DMFCs strongly depend on the use of Pt electrocatalyst for effective oxygen reduction and Pt-Ru electrocatalyst for methanol fuel electrooxidation. The use of bi-or multicomponent anode catalysts for methanol electrooxidations an effective way to solve the catalyst poisoning problems caused by CO and other reaction intermediates under low-temperature reaction conditions. Conventionally, high conductive carbon backs, such as Vulcan XC72 with high surface areas are used as supports for electrocatalysts to ensure large electro-reaction surfaces and good electronic conduction. Formation of electrocatalysts on CNT for membrane fuel cell applications is commonly conducted using reductive deposition methods. In this work, we prepared carbon nanotube-supported Pt-Ru (Pt-Ru/CNT) with a desired electrocatalyst composition using a modified polyol method. The prepard Pt-Ru/CNT ecelctrocatalyst has a composition close to the intended 20wt.%Pt-10wt.%Ru and physical characteristics of prepared Pt-Ru/CNT ecelctrocatalyst was performed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy and electrochemical investigation on the prepared Pt-u/CNT electrocatalyst with respect to methanol electrooxidation was carried out using cyclic voltametry. The results of this study clearly show that prepared electrocatalyst is about nanometric scale and have a good performance on electrooxidation of methanol. Overall, the prepared Pt- Ru/CNT s suitable for uses in DMFCs as an anod electrocatalyst due to distinguished characteristics of CNT and the excellent electrocatalyst morphology with the right composition.