Evaluation of the fuel cell performances of TiO2/PAN electrospun carbon-based electrodes

Electrocatalytic effect of the untreated and TiO2+polyacrylonitrile (PAN) modified discarded battery coal (DBC) and pencil graphite electrodes (PGE) were evaluated in fuel cell (FC) applications. TiO2+PAN solution is coated on PGE and DBC electrodes by electrospinning. According to the FESEM and EDS characterizations, TiO2 and PAN nanofibers are found to be approximately 40 and 240 nm in size. TiO2+PAN/PGE showed the best FC performances with 2.00 A cm-2 current density and 5.05 W cm-2 power density values, whereas TiO2+PAN/DBC showed 0.68 A cm-2 current density and 0.62 W cm-2 power density values. Electrochemical characterizations of PGE and TiO2+PAN/PGE electrodes were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Finally, long-term FC measurement results of developed electrodes exhibited very reasonable recovery values. Along with the comparison of the electrode performances, the recovery of DBCs as electrodes for renewable energy production has been achieved.