Performance of a Nickel Boride Fuel Cell Anode using Hydrogen and Ethylene

Abstract

Two factors have to be borne in mind in considering the possible widespread application of fuel cells, namely, the world supply and the cost of the catalysts. Slaughter and Gilvarry¹ have pointed out that only a few hundredths of 1 per cent of the world demand for power could be produced by hydrogen–oxygen fuel cells using the entire world production of platinum. Consequently, attempts have been made to find cheaper and more readily available materials, even though platinum is a superior catalyst. Sintered powdered nickel has been used, for example, by Bacon², but a performance comparable to that of platinum at ambient temperatures can only be obtained at 200° C. Another variant, which eliminates the need to go to a higher temperature, is Raney nickel³. More recently it has been shown that a performance only slightly less than that of the noble metals can be obtained with ‘Teflon’ bonded nickel boride supported on a nickel screen^4–7. At the same power-level and the same operating efficiency, the cost of these electrodes is only one-twentieth of those containing platinum. It is also interesting to note that cobalt molybdate⁸ is almost as good as platinum black in catalysing the electrochemical oxidation of hydrocarbons such as propane and propylene.