![\"\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/scholars-ignatowich.jpg\" "\\"scholars-ignatowich\\"")
<\/a>Michael has been involved in alternative energy projects since first arriving on campus. As a freshman, he joined the UConn chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE).\u00a0 Over the past two semesters, he has contributed to the design of an alternative energy car that is to be entered into the AICHE Chem-E-Car competition next spring. The project has encouraged him to apply his knowledge of chemical engineering and mathematics to the production of alternative energy.\u00a0 Now, with his University Scholar project, Michael is planning to take that exploration one step further.\u00a0 His project involves the development of a novel type of fuel cell, one that will be cheaper and more stable than the current leading fuel cell.<\/p>\nProton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are the most common type of hydrogen fuel cell, often found in automotive applications.\u00a0 A PEM is a material that will let only protons, not electrons, pass through.\u00a0 In a PEM, hydrogen gas is placed on one side of the membrane and oxygen gas on the other.\u00a0 The hydrogen then diffuses through the membrane, \u201ctrying\u201d to combine with the oxygen.\u00a0 The electron, however, cannot go through the membrane and is stripped off as the hydrogen proton passes through.\u00a0 A wire connects both sides of the apparatus, allowing the free electrons to travel across the membrane to join with the hydrogen proton and oxygen gas to make water.\u00a0 The passage of the electrons through the wire produces a current, generating electrical power.\u00a0 The process has several drawbacks: first, it requires expensive metals, such as platinum, for the catalyst; in addition, the membrane can become unstable over time. Thus, Michael seeks to design an alternative, carbonate anion exchange membrane fuel cell to see what benefits that process may hold.<\/p>\n
Anion exchange fuel cells work in much like PEM fuel cells except that instead of transferring protons across the membrane, a carbonate ion, CO3<\/sub>2-<\/sup>, is transferred.\u00a0 The carbonate ion is created when oxygen and CO2<\/sub> come in contact with a catalyst crystal on the membrane.\u00a0 Because the carbonate ion has a charge of -2, it has two extra electrons; these must be pulled from the other side.\u00a0 This movement of electrons across the membrane creates an electrical current, generating power.\u00a0 Anion exchange fuel cells require no precious metal catalysts, so they are less expensive than PEM fuel cells, and the membrane tends to be more stable.\u00a0 Michael\u2019s hope is that, eventually, cheaper fuel cells such as these can be used commercially, moving alternative energy forward and mitigating the damaging effects of climate change.<\/p>\n Michael is advised on his University Scholar project by Drs. William Mustain and Ranjan Srivastava, both of Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering, and Dr. Gerald Leibowitz (Mathematics).\u00a0 After attaining his B.S. and an M.S. in math from UConn, Michael plans to get a a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael has been involved in alternative energy projects since first arriving on campus. As a freshman, he joined the UConn chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-203517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 22:44:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203517"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203517"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}