Microfluidic electrochemistry flow and potential controllers

燃料电池是一种正在发展中的能量转换技术。使用可从农业或其他生物质来源获得的乙醇等替代燃料，提供了一种减少对石油的依赖以满足未来能源需求的方法。乙醇等分子比现有的燃料电池燃料(如氢和甲醇)更为复杂。因此，对它们在燃料电池中如何运行和分裂的理解更加复杂。所要求的设备允许开发新的微流控电化学方法来研究这些更复杂的过程。这些分子沿着一条非常细的通道流动，在那里它们以不同的电压通过电极。通过测量不同电极上的电流及其与电压和流速的关系，可以确定分子的氧化机制。两个流合并的实验也有助于找出正在发生的事情。例如，突然从惰性流体转变为有燃料的流体意味着可以研究燃料与电极相互作用的最初阶段。由于电极有时会迅速失活，这可能是研究失活过程并了解如何防止它的重要途径。

Fuel cells are a developing technology for energy conversion. The use of alternative fuels such as ethanol, that can be derived from agricultural or other biomass sources, provides a way to be less reliant on oil for future energy needs. Molecules such as ethanol are more complicated than the established fuel cell fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. Therefore, understanding of how they operate and split up in fuel cells is more complicated. The equipment requested allows new microfluidic electrochemical methods to be developed to study these more complicated processes. The molecules are flowed down a very thin channel where they pass electrodes at different voltages. By measuring the currents at the different electrodes and how they depend on the voltages and flow rates, the mechanism of oxidation of the molecule can be determined. Experiments where two flows merge can also help to find out what is happening. For example suddenly changing from an inert fluid to the fluid with fuel means that the very first stages of interaction of the fuel with an electrode can be studied. Since electrodes sometimes deactivate quickly, this can be an important way to study the deactivation process and understand how to prevent it.