Surya Prakash
USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Like artists, USC researchers find inspiration all around them.
Although he’s not an imbiber, it was beer that led USC College chemist G. K. Surya Prakash to develop a better membrane for the liquid-methanol fuel cell.
The old membrane, the commercially made Nafion, allowed protons to pass through easily but also let liquid methanol and excessive water to move across the barrier and degrade the fuel cell's overall performance.
Knowing that the alcohol industry uses a semipermeable membrane to selectively filter alcohol from beer, he and his team used the same concept in developing a new membrane that is cheaper and less leaky than industry standards, representing a major breakthrough toward advancing methanol fuel-cell technology. USC received a patent for the new membrane in fall 2002.