The objective of this proposal is to identify the nature of species formed on the surface of the catalyst material when they are exposed to typical fuel cell feed stocks and their partial oxidation products. Vibrational spectroscopy in the form of inelastic neutron scattering (INS) is a powerful tool to provide direct spectroscopic evidence of the interaction and adsorption of species on supported metal nanoparticles. Moreover, INS has been found in recent years to be a valuable tool for the structural determination of adsorbed hydrogen on fuel cell catalysts. This work extends these studies by probing the surface interaction of ethanol and its partial oxidation products on Pt based fuel cell catalysts.