Science and Education Publishing American Journal of Mining and Metallurgy 2 4 2014 09 29 Pd-based Catalysts for Ethanol Oxidation in Alkaline Electrolyte 64 69 EN A. M. Sheikh Department of Mechanical Engineering, South Valley University, Qena 83521, Egypt E. L. Silva L. Moares L. M. Antonini Mohammed Y. Abellah C. F. Malfatti AJMM2014241 10.12691/ajmm-2-4-1 2014 09 12 2014 09 24 2014 09 29 Direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFCs) have received tremendous attention from academics recently since they can oxidize the liquid ethanol to produce electrical energy efficiently. In this work, five catalysts, which are single, binary, and ternary ones of Pd, Sn, and Ni respectively, are synthesized by the impregnation-reduction method to speed up the reaction kinetics of ethanol oxidation (EOR) in alkaline medium. The crystal structure is investigated by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The electrochemical performance is evaluated by the cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronomperometry (CA) analyses. The best catalytic performance has been achieved by the bi-catalyst Pd40Ni60/C and the tri-catalyst Pd40Ni50Sn10/C. The reason, for that high performance, could be exemplified that Ni could generate OH- species at lower potentials.