Saccharide Fuel Cell (SFC)

A study on the possibility to use saccharides as fuels in a Fuel Cell is presented. The study deals with the abundance of saccharides and ways to extract them from solid organic urban, forest and agricultural wastes, and from food industry effluents. The use of saccharides as fuel is treated from the thermodynamic point of view and compared with other common fuels currently used in fuel cells. Other properties of saccharides, relevant to their use as fuels, such as: safety, transportability, storage, inflammability, poisonous character and volatility, are also considered. The different possible catalytic electrodes needed to create a Saccharide Fuel Cell are discussed. Three options are considered: Microbiological, Enzymatic and Inorganic. None of the available catalytic electrodes has satisfactory performance. We conclude that since sacharides are human friendly, abundant, have high-energy content and are relatively easy to extract, efforts should be given to develop a Saccharide Fuel Cell. These fuel cells have the potential to become the basis of a decentralized power economy and open economical ways to deal with the environmental problems caused by organic wastes. The concept exposed in this paper will be tested in a Pilot-Demonstration Project, planned in the Agan Beit Natufa (ABN) region in Israel. We estimate a production of about 11 GWh/year from this project.