Methanol fuel is highly toxic and a number of alternatives have been researched in order to overcome this. One alternative is a direct-ethanol fuel cell. While still a proton-exchange fuel cell, ethanol liquid is less toxic and has a higher energy density (8.0 kWh/kg vs 61. kWh/kg). The ethanol can be produced from a number of biological sources (sugar cane, wheat, corn, etc).
However, current designs require an expensive platinum-based catalysts, thus making it unpractical in the near future. In order to overcome this, there are projects underway to use nanostructured electrocatalysts that do not contain any precious metals.
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