UT Team receives multi year, 5.8 Million grant to work on light weight fuel cells

from fuelcellworks.com

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. 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, other group members 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.