A research team in New Mexico is studying the possibility of putting biofuel into a fuel cell.

According to director of the University of New Mexico’s Center for Emerging Energy Technologies Plamen Atanassov, they hope to “link the world of biofuels with the world of fuel cells.”

A major grant from the Department of Energy’s EPSCoR program brought together research faculty from UNM, New Mexico State University, New Mexico Tech and Eastern New Mexico University as well as researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Labs to explore the possibility of making usable fuel cells from ethanol to produce electricity.

The research groups want to determine whether ethanol can be reformed to produce hydrogen. If possible, they will build on the results to explore how direct electrochemical oxidation of ethanol might work. The research is expected to result in a new family of materials.