Carbon fuel cells for power generation, Another project from Uva Wellassa University
The Uva Wellassa University (UWU) is the first entrepreneurial university in Sri Lanka known as the Centre of Excellence for value addition. It fulfils the requirement of producing undergraduates with entrepreneurial skills much needed for the country. This is the sixth of a series of articles based on final year student research reports on value addition which will be useful for industrialists as well as readers. The objective of this series is to encourage and introduce country’s future entrepreneurs, to make the industrialists and other relevant parties aware of potential businesses. Interested parties can contact the University for more details.
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Manel Karunanayake |
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Manel Karunanayaka, who entered the Uva Wellassa University from Badulla Central College followed the science and technology degree program specializing in Materials Science and Technology at the Uva-Wellassa University.
She did her research on ‘Low cost and performance enhanced materials for electrochemical energy conversion’. Her future plan is to become a lecturer and educate many more students to further develop systems to save energy.
Karunanayake has developed low cost and performance enhanced materials for electrochemical energy conversion.
Commercial value of the project
From a national perspective, this study has strengthened the already existing knowledge base in materials based technology and to increase the cadre of scientists working on novel materials and devices in Sri Lanka.
Moreover, the gained knowledge and experience through this project can be used to develop our own raw materials abundant in Sri Lanka for novel electrochemical energy conversion applications, hence also finding ways for upgrading our mineral resources, which are at present sold cheap in large quantities.
On the other hand, there are a number of industries in Sri Lanka already engaged in manufacturing traditional types of electrochemical energy conversion devices, such as primary batteries.
This study will also be a step forward to initiate productions related to these novel types of energy conversion devices such as fuel cells and rechargeable batteries in Sri Lanka.
At present there isn’t a single company to manufacture rechargeable batteries as required facilities and machinery is not available in Sri Lanka . But it could be a huge foreign exchange saver if these requirements can be met, Karunanayake said.
Objective
The increasing demand for energy has made it very essential to develop high efficient energy conversion devices. This goal can be achieved with the recent introduction of more efficient versatile electrochemical energy conversion device such as fuel cells and batteries. However, especially the high unit cost of these cells, mainly resulted from very expensive electrode materials and yet unsolved materials related problems effecting performance degradation of the cells, are obstacling the reach of these versatile technologies to the common mass.
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Electrical conductivity measured pellet |
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The molten carbonate fuel cell diagram |
This study addressed the cost reduction and performance enhancement of electrode materials in the Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC).
The MCFC has attracted wide attention due to promising characteristics for large-scale electric power generation.
However, the dissolution of the state-of-the-art lithiated nickel oxide cathode material has been the most crucial lifetime limiting factor and the major obstacle for the commercialization of MCFC.
Brief description
Electrochemical cells consist of two electrodes of positive and negative, which are respectively called ‘Cathode’ and ‘Anode’ and an electrolyte that acts as ionic conductors.
A fuel cell produces electricity from fuel (on the anode side) and an oxidant (on the cathode side), which react in the presence of an electrolyte.
The reactants flow into the cell, and the reaction products flow out of it, while the electrolyte remains within it. Fuel cells can operate virtually continuously as long as the necessary flows are maintained. A typical fuel cell produces a voltage about 1 V at full rated load.
The cost reduction and performance enhancement of the MCFC were done by modifying the-state-of-the-art co based expensive electrode materials by introducing cheaper Fe and Ni components.
The experimental work was performed with the collaboration of the Institute of Fundamental Studies (IFS), Kandy, under the supervision of Dr. Athula Wijayasinghe of the Uva-Wellassa University and Pushpaka Samarasinghe of IFS.
These novel cheaper materials were synthesized by using low cost materials synthesis techniques such as glycine-nitrate process, which can produce nano particles.
The electrical conductivity of these materials was determined by performing direct current measurements.
Outcome
This study showed the ability to obtain low cost and performance enhanced materials with appropriate electrical conductivity for MCFC cathode.
Further the reported significantly high room temperature conductivity indicate the high potentiality of these material also for electrode materials in room temperature applications such as in re-chargeable Li-ion battery.
