Ethanol - Dichromate Fuel-Oxidant and Molybdenum Oxide Nanorods Catalyst for Microfluidic Paper Based Fuel Cell

In this thesis, self - pumping L - shaped paper based fuel cells were developed and char acterized by using ethanol as a fuel and dichromate as an oxidant. The main objective was to study the performance of t hese fuel cell s which can be very useful as a power source in portable power applications. This L - shaped paper based fuel cell can delive r power in the range of milliwatt s . We use the porosity of the paper for the laminar flow o f the liquids. Different carbon based electrode s li ke graphite and carbon cloth were used and a Na - poly( styrene sulfonate) (PSS) gel electrolyte was used between the two L - shaped paper s which act as proton exchanger s like NAFION . Without the catalyst, the cell deliver s an open circuit voltage ( OCV ) of 1.42 V and a maximum power density of 2.73 mW/cm 2 . Another objective of this study was to study the effect of MoO 3 nan orods as an electro - catalyst in en hancing the cell performance. By using this catalyst on both the electrodes, the maximum power density an d current density enhanced to 6.32 mW /cm 2 and 14.05 mA /cm 2 . T he cell characterisation has been accomplished by polari sation curve s and impedance stud ies . Electrochemical impedance stud ies show that with increase in fuel concentration , polarisation resistance decreases and total cell resistance with catalyst has lower value than that of cell without cata lyst. In the appli cation part, by connecting t wo paper based fuel cells in series, a LED was successfully illuminated