A team of nine faculty led by Dr. Arumugam “Ram” Manthiram has received $3.5 million from the U.S. Office of Naval Research for three years to develop novel materials and manufacturing processes for methanol-powered fuel cells. The naval office is expected to provide $2.3 million more for two additional years on this Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative grant about this alternative to lithium ion batteries.

Power sources based on methanol-powered fuel cells could weigh about half as much as their lithium ion counterparts. The methanol-powered fuel cells would also permit consumers and military personnel to carry replacement methanol cartridges and avoid recharging devices using electrical outlets.

“Soldiers wouldn’t have to look for an electrical socket to recharge their batteries,” said Manthiram, “and fuel cells would significantly reduce the weight soldiers have to carry.”

To investigate methanol-powered fuel cells, the holder of the B.F. Goodrich Endowed Professorship in Materials Engineering is working with seven university colleagues and a mechanical engineering colleague at Stanford University.

The other University of Texas at Austin participants are: Dr. Allen Bard (the Norman Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry); Dr. Joseph Beaman (the Earnest F. Gloyna Regents Chair in Engineering and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering); Dr. Christopher Bielawski (assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry); Dr. David Bourell (the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor No. 2); Dr. Venkat Ganesan (the Chevron Centennial Teaching Fellow in Chemical Engineering); Dr. Jeremy Meyers (assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and a member of the university’s Center for Electrochemistry along with Bard and Manthiram); and Dr. Kristin Wood (the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professor in Engineering No. 1). The Stanford University participant is: Dr. Friedrich Prinz, the Rodney H. Adams Professor in the School of Engineering.

Manthiram, Bard, and other group members will develop cheaper, more efficient materials for prompting the chemical reactions that generate electricity in methanol-powered fuel cells. Cheaper, more efficient membranes that serve as proton transport medium for these chemical reactions will also be studied. To develop an efficient manufacturing process, Beaman and colleagues will use computer-aided selective laser sintering and predictive process controls for producing components such as carbon plates that control the flow of methanol and oxygen to membrane-electrode assemblies. These membrane-electrode assemblies, which generate electricity, will also be produced using other types of advanced manufacturing processes.

The researchers will also study how to integrate the different components that would be manufactured to produce an efficient methanol-powered fuel cell system.