Evaluation of a Passive Anion-Exchange Membrane Micro Fuel Cell Using Glycerol from Several Sources J. M. Olivares-Ramı ´rez 1 , A. Dector 2 *, J. A. Ban ˜uelos-Dı ´as 3 , D. M. Amaya-Cruz 4 , A. Ortiz-Verdı ´n 5 , O. Jime ´nez-Sandoval 6 , N. Sabate ´ 7,8 , J. P. Esquivel 8 1 Universidad Tecnolo ´ gica de San Juan del Rı ´o, 76800, San Juan Del Rı ´o, Quere ´taro, Mexico 2 CONACYT – Universidad Tecnolo ´ gica de San Juan del Rı ´o, 76800, San Juan Del Rı ´o, Quere ´taro, Mexico 3 Centro de Innovacio ´n Aplicada en Tecnologı ´as Competitivas, 37545, Leo ´ n, Guanajuato, Mexico 4 Universidad Auto ´ noma de Quere ´taro, Programa de Posgrado en Alimentos del Centro de la Repu ´blica, 76010, Quere ´taro, Quere ´taro, Mexico 5 Universidad Polite ´cnica de Quere ´taro, 76240, El Marque ´s, Quere ´taro, Mexico 6 Centro de Investigacio ´n y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Polite ´cnico Nacional, Unidad Quere ´taro, 76001, Quere ´taro, Quere ´taro, Mexico 7 Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), 08010, Barcelona, Spain 8 Instituto de Microelectro ´nica de Barcelona, IMB-CNM (CSIC), Campus UAB, 08193, Barcelona, Spain Received November 14, 2017; accepted November 07, 2018; published online ¢¢¢ Abstract This paper addresses energy generated in a passive anion- exchange membrane micro fuel cell (PAEMmFC) using gly- cerol from several kinds of sources: high-purity glycerol (HPG), saponification process-derived glycerol (SPDG), crude glycerol from sunflower oil biodiesel (CGSOB) and crude glycerol from cooking oil biodiesel (CGCOB). Spectro- photometry, volumetric Karl Fischer, gas chromatography, calorimetry, Fourier transform infrared, and cyclic voltam- metry were employed for the glycerol samples characteriza- tion. The PAEMmFC was tested using 0.1M glycerol of each type, achieving power densities of 1.008, 0.932, 0.871, and 0.865 mW cm –2 for HPG, SPDG, CGSOB and CGCOB, respectively. On the other hand, commercially available soft- ware from ANSYS, Inc. was used to determine the fuel velocity and pressure in the fuel reservoir and current collec- tor as a complementary evaluation of the PAEMmFC. The results obtained for the prices of the energy of each glycerol sample were presented in order to demonstrate that the cost of energy generated through HPG is approximately 16.5 times the SPDG energy cost and 130 times the CGCOB energy cost. Keywords: Crude Glycerol, Cyclic Voltammetry, Electro- chemistry, Energy Conversion, Fuel Cells, Membrane 1 Introduction Recently, the supply of energy for mobile devices through micro fuel cells has caught the attention of research groups around the world [1–5]. Various fuels, such as methanol [6], ethanol [7], ethylene glycol [8], glucose [9], formic acid [10] and glycerol [11], have been tested for use in distinct types of micro fuel cell systems. Research into micro fuel cells utilizing glycerol as fuel has experienced a growing interest in the past few years [11–14]. The main advantages to using glycerol are non-toxicity, non-flammability, non-volatility [15–17] and eco- nomic viability, since it can be obtained as a by-product of bio- diesel production (transesterification process) and soap manu- facturing (saponification process) [18–20]. The quality of crude glycerol samples obtained from biodiesel production depends largely on the amount and kind of catalyst employed, the amount of water applied in the washing process and the raw material used, such as: soybean oil [21, 22], olive oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, used cooking oil [23, 24], palm oil [25], castor oil [26], rapeseed oil [27, 28], jatropha curcas oil [29], palm kernel oil [30] and linseed oil [31]. Crude glycerol has limited applica- tions as a raw material in pharmaceutical and chemical indus- – [ * ] Corresponding author, andres_dector@live.com FUEL CELLS 00, 0000, No. 0, 1–9 ª 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER DOI: 10.1002/fuce.201700190