A grant from the Department of Energy’s (DoE) EPSCoR programme has brought together research faculties from the University of New Mexico, 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.

The grant amounts to US$750,000 per year for up to six years for the research groups, which wish to find out 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.