Preparation of well performing electrodes using non fluorinated polymer electrolytes is a challenge due to the transport properties of the ion conducting polymer as well as due to the solvents involved. Polymer perfluorinated sulfonic acids such as Nafion (R) are possible solvable as ionomer in the DMFC anode catalyst layer by concentrated methanol solution at temperatures above 100 degrees C; therefore more stable polymers are necessary. In this work, we studied the conditions to use sulfonated polysulfone (sPSU) as an ionomer in the anode of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) operating at a temperature of 130 degrees C. For preparing catalyst dispersions, toxic and flammable solvents were substituted by water using the harmless surfactant Triton X-100 as an additive. As a result the preparation of the catalyst inks and MEAs was accelerated and simplified. The sPSU based anodes showed quite high performance for the methanol oxidation especially in a half cell. The best results were obtained with an anode catalyst layer containing 5% sPSU prepared from a water based ink containing 2% sPSU and 20% Triton X-100 sprayed on a Nafion (R) 115 membrane. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.