Investigation of using sulfur-containing gases in low-temperature fuel cell at sulfuric acid production site

Abstract

The possibility and effectiveness of using sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide as the fuel in lowtemperature fuel cells at the sulfuric acid production site has been investigated. A fuel cell has been designed and constructed using palladium as a catalyst, which enables conversion of the energy of oxidation of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide to the electric energy. The experimental data showed that the use of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide as a fuel allows achieving the power of 1.0 and 0.5 mW, respectively. The comparative studies with the use of hydrogen in the same fuel cell resulted in the power of about 2.0 mW, i.e. the use of hydrogen sulfide delivers a performance comparable with that of the hydrogen. The processes of oxidizing of the sulfur containing gases are used in our company in production of sulfuric acid. Oxidation of these gases conducted using the conventional technological processes. The use of these processes to produce energy as a byproduct could be an attractive way to reduce the energy consumption of the whole process. Considering the relatively high power obtained in this work for the sulfur containing gases fed fuel cells, the substitution of conventional oxidation of sulfur containing gases in this technological chain by the fuel cell oxidation, and by-producing the electric energy, could be very profitable for the energy efficiency enhancement of the main production process. In the future work, the design and development of fuel cell catalysts and membranes to enhance the performances of sulfur containing fuel cells will be significant.