ABSTRACT
Nowadays, from academia to industry, there is a renewed interest in fuel cell technology, with a primary focus in the area of electrochemistry and catalysis science. This interest is due to environmental legislation around CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions (Tamiotti, 2009) that demands the use of high-efficiency energy production systems. Such systems also have great potential in the area of desalination technology (Al-Hallaj et al., 2004; Kenet and Belmar, 2003; Singh, 2008; Wang et al., 2011). Fuel cells are characterized by high operational efficiency, which results in decreased fuel consumption and a lower environmental impact. A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy of a fuel directly into electricity through electrochemical reactions, with significant waste heat (e.g. solid oxide fuel cell in Fig. 7.1). The first fuel cell was fabricated in the 1830s, and slow but steady progress has been made toward their commercialization ever since.
