Intellectual Property India Publishes Patent Application for 'A Novel Photocatalytic Hydrogen Fuel Cell With In-Situ Hydrogen Generation' Filed by Richard Pinto; and Alva's Institute Of Engineering And Technology

MUMBAI, India, Aug. 8 -- Intellectual Property India has published a patent application (202441007383 A) filed by Richard Pinto; and Alva's Institute Of Engineering And Technology, Mangalore, Karnataka, on Feb. 3, 2024, for 'a novel photocatalytic hydrogen fuel cell with in-situ hydrogen generation.'

Inventor(s) include Richard Pinto; Jayarama Arasalike; Satyanarayan; Shriganesh Prabhu; Siddhartha Prakash Duttagupta; Arnab Dutta; and Sanjog Sunil Nagarkar.

The application for the patent was published on Aug. 8, under issue no. 32/2025.

According to the abstract released by the Intellectual Property India: "The fundamental idea behind the present invention is the provision of a Photocatalytic Hydrogen Fuel Cell (PHFC) (28) device that performs better than a conventional HFC device with less hydrogen input when exposed to UV-Vis radiation (13) at the anode side. The anode in this invention uses a hydrogen-producing UV-Vis conductive nanoparticle photo-catalyst (6) and is situated on the side of the GDL (4) that is opposite the Pt layer (7). A Cr-Au layer (5) is deposited on UV-visible transparent acrylic for the anode and on aluminum for the cathode (21) to create anode and cathode flow channels (2, 11). The electrodes are then engraved with a CNC machine or laser cut to obtain channels for the flow of hydrogen at the UV-visible transparent anode and oxygen at the cathode. The alternative method for creating anode and cathode flow channels involves depositing a Cr-Au layer on thin metal plates (21) for anodes and thick metal plates (20) for cathodes, engraving flow channels on the Cr-Au layer using a CNC machine or laser, and then aligning and gluing the thin metal plates to UV-vis transparent fused quartz plates (19) with the Cr-Au layer on top resulting in UV-vis transparent anode. Proton exchange membrane (8) is sandwiched between two catalyst-loaded GDLs (4, 10) that are positioned between anode and cathode flow channels, one at the UV-visible transparent anode and the other at the cathode, to create the PHFC(28). UV-vis light irradiation (13) at the anode side and a variable humidification system comprising humidification tube (24), control valves (25), Mass flow controller (MFC) for humidified hydrogen (27) and MFC for oxygen (26) are used to operate the PHFC (28) device."

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