Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Significance Statement:
Engineers at University of Utah have now developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes (alkane monooxygenase and alcohol oxidase) to help jet fuel produce electricity without needing to ignite the fuel. These new fuel cells can be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power and sensors.
ACS Catal., 2014, 4, pp 4289–4294.
Y. Ulyanova†, MA. Arugula‡, M. Rasmussen‡, E. Pinchon†, U. Lindstrom†, S. Singhal†, SD. Minteer‡.
ABSTRACT
Alkanes are attractive fuels for fuel cells due to their high energy density, but their use has not transitioned to biofuel cells. This paper discusses the development of a novel enzyme cascade utilizing alkane monooxygenase (AMO) and alcohol oxidase (AOx) to perform mediated bioelectrocatalytic oxidation of hexane and octane. This was then applied for the bioelectrocatalysis of the jet fuel JP-8, which was tested directly in an enzymatic biofuel cell to evaluate performance. The enzymatic catalysts were shown to be sulfur tolerant and produced power densities up to 3 mW/cm2 from native JP-8 without desulfurization as opposed to traditional metal catalysts, which require fuel preprocessing.
