(490b) Carbon-Fueled Fuel Cell Using Charcoal From Unused Biomass

Carbonization process is widely used to obtain charcoal from unused biomass; e.g., pruning branches, lumbering wastes and agriculture residues. Because design and operation of carbonization processes has been well discussed, the installation of the process is not so difficult. The use of charcoal has a long history; however, some historical use, such as cooking and heating energy, are replaced to electricity, gas and oil. Nowadays, the market of charcoal is limited. There are many techniques to use carbonaceous material as energy e.g. direct combustion, pellet and using as fuel by gasification. Among the energy conversion technologies, we are focusing on carbon-fueled fuel cell, such as direct carbon fuel cell (DCFC). The DCFC have many attractive features. Theoretical power efficiency is more 80% while that of hydrogen-fueled fuel cell is about 45%. The device of DCFC which use solid carbon can be simple because the process is not needed combustion or gasification. Solid carbons are obtained from many resources; e.g., coal, petroleum coke, unused biomass, organic garbage. Especially the use of biomass as fuel is carbon neutral. We discussed the potential to apply charcoals from unused biomass to DCFC.