Lignocellulosic biomass as sustainable feedstock and materials for power generation and energy storage

Mediated fuel cells are electrochemical devices that produce power in a manner similar to that of conventional proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). They differ from PEMFCs in their use of redox mediators dissolved in liquid electrolyte to conduct oxidation of the fuel or reduction of the oxidant, typically O2, in bulk solution. The mediators transport electrons (and often protons) between the electrode and the catalysts or chemical reagents in solution. This strategy can help overcome many of the challenges associated with conventional fuel cells, including managing complex multiphase reactions (as in O2 reduction) or the use of challenging or heterogeneous fuels, such as hydrocarbons, polyols, and biomass. Mediators are also commonly used in enzymatic fuel cells, where direct electron transfer from the electrode to the enzymatic active site can be slow. This review provides a comprehensive survey of historical and recent mediated fuel cell efforts, including applications using chemical and enzymatic catalysts.

Mediated Fuel Cells: Soluble Redox Mediators and Their Applications to Electrochemical Reduction of O2 and Oxidation of H2, Alcohols, Biomass, and Complex Fuels.

In recent years the use of renewable sources, such as lignocellulosic biomass (LCB), as the fuel for various types of fuel cells received growing interest. Different types of fuel cells, that is, operated at low temperatures (T<100 °C; microbial fuel cells (MFC), alkaline (AFCs) and flow fuel cells (FFCs)), intermediate temperatures (T in the range 150-300 °C, proton-conducting inorganic-organic composite membrane fuel cells), and high temperatures (T≥500 °C, direct carbon fuel cells (DCFCs)), have been used for the conversion of the chemical energy in LCB to electrical energy. The economic advantage of the direct use of LCB consists of avoiding the acid hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose for low-temperature fuel cells and the pretreatment at high temperatures necessary to convert biomass to biochar (pyrolysis) in the case of high-temperature fuel cells. In this Review, the characteristics of direct biomass fuel cells are presented and their performance is compared with that of indirect biomass fuel cells fed with glucose (low-temperature fuel cells) and biochar (high-temperature fuel cells).

Lignocellulose, Cellulose and Lignin as Renewable Alternative Fuels for Direct Biomass Fuel Cells.

The advantages of the use of glucose as a fuel in low-temperature fuel cells are its abundance, easy availability, low cost, non-toxicity and no storage problems. Renewable biomass resources, including starch and cellulose, can be readily converted to the glucose molecule with little energy cost. This overview is focused on abiotic external glucose fuel cells (GFCs), presenting an appreciable performance (maximum power density ≥ 0.1 mW cm−2). Various types of traditional acid and alkaline fuel cells, using solid catalysts, have been fueled with glucose. A comparison of traditional fuel cells fueled with low molecular weight compounds and glucose showed that GFCs have a considerably lower performance, due to partial glucose oxidation, with formation of gluconic acid, by releasing only two electrons, so there is still much room for their improvement. A new type of fuel cells, using liquid catalysts instead of solid catalysts, have recently aroused great interest. When used as a fuel in liquid catalyst fuel cells (LCFCs), glucose provides better cell performance than more simple fuels. In LCFCs glucose can be more deeply oxidized, up to CO2. The hydroxyl/carbon number of polyhydric alcohols seems to be the key factor that determines the LCFC performance, indicating that higher polyhydric compounds, such as glucose, are more suitable fuels for LCFCs than simple alcohols.

External abiotic glucose fuel cells

Homogeneous electrocatalysis has been well studied over the past several decades for the conversion of small molecules to useful products for green energy applications or as chemical feedstocks. However, in order for these catalyst systems to be used in industrial applications, their activity and stability must be improved. In naturally occurring enzymes, redox equivalents (electrons, often in a concerted manner with protons) are delivered to enzyme active sites by small molecules known as redox mediators (RMs). Inspired by this, co-electrocatalytic systems with homogeneous catalysts and RMs have been developed for the conversion of alcohols, nitrogen, unsaturated organic substrates, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. In these systems, the RMs have been shown to both increase the activity of the catalyst and shift selectivity to more desired products by altering catalytic cycles and/or avoiding high-energy intermediates. However, the area is currently underdeveloped and requires additional fundamental advancements in order to become a more general strategy. Here, we summarize the recent examples of homogeneous co-electrocatalysis and discuss possible future directions for the field.

Redox Mediators in Homogeneous Co-electrocatalysis.

Ferric ion pair mediated biomass redox flow fuel cell and related chemical reaction kinetics study

The invention relates to the technical field of fuel cells, and relates to a biomass liquid flow fuel cell system. The invention discloses a biomass liquid flow fuel cell system, comprising an anode electrolyte and a cathode electrolyte, wherein the anode electrolyte is an iron divalent anode electrolyte and the cathode electrolyte is a vanadium pentavalent cathode electrolyte; The preparation method of the bivalent iron anode electrolyte comprises the following steps of: carrying out a first reaction on a ferric salt, a first strong acid and biomass in a first solvent to obtain the bivalent iron anode electrolyte; The preparation method of the pentavalent vanadium cathode electrolyte is that the vanadium oxide and the second strong acid are subjected to a second reaction in a second solvent to obtain the pentavalent vanadium cathode electrolyte. The invention provides a biomass liquid flow fuel cell system, which effectively solves the technical problems of excessive energy consumption, low power generation efficiency, low recycling utilization rate and easy deactivation of catalyst of the existing fuel cell.

A biomass flow fuel cell system

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Chen Lifen

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Ferric ion pair mediated biomass redox flow fuel cell and related chemical reaction kinetics study

A biomass flow fuel cell system