Last week was very intense and tiring, but exciting all the same. I have been teamed up with a Master's student on the fuel cell project. She's super sweet and helpful. The woman who worked on the fuel cell before is no longer working in the lab (I think she is writing her thesis right now so that is taking up most of her time) so Qin and I have been reading articles independently to learn what the process should be. Luckily I got a lot of practice with this in the spring!
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| This is the chamber that holds the fuel cell! |
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| I am currently only working with the cathode half of the fuel cell in the hopes of stabilizing it's enzyme, Glucose Oxidase (GOx), which will lengthen the lifetime of the cell as a whole. We are expecting that our implementation of carbon nanotubes will help the process. Here it is, fully assembled. It's probed with multiple electrodes (reference, working, and current) and in a solution of GOx and buffer. We are not using mediators or a PEM separator in order to enhance power potential. |
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| Here is a picture of the program we are using. It runs through 4 cycles, ranging from -1 Volts to +1 Volts (positive and negative just show direction), with the positive slope signifying oxidation and the negative slope showing reduction in the fuel cell. |
I am trying my best to be as thorough as possible before I start trying to manipulate the project. I believe I now fully understand the fuel cell, however the program we use to analyze its data (CH Instruments) is still a bit of a mystery to me. I have most of it's basics down, but I was also told I would be able to know if the GOx had stabilized just through our charts but I'm not sure on how to identify that. I will also be learning how to use an FTIR.
Good luck to everyone this week in their labs!
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