Carbon–air fuel cell without a reforming process Original Research Article

This paper describes a direct carbon–air fuel cell (DCFC) which uses a molten hydroxide electrolyte. In DCFCs, carbon is electrochemically directly oxidized to generate the power without a reforming process. Despite its compelling cost and performance advantages, the use of molten metal hydroxide electrolytes has been ignored by DCFC researches, primarily due to the potential lack of invariance of the molten hydroxide electrolyte caused by its reaction with carbon dioxide. This paper describes the electrochemistry of a patented medium-temperature DCFC based on molten hydroxide electrolyte, which overcomes the historical carbonate formation.