Abstract
Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (IT-SOFC) technology offers interesting opportunities in the panorama of a larger penetration of renewable and distributed power generation, namely high electrical efficiency at manageable scales for both remote and industrial applications. In order to optimize the performance and the operating conditions of such a pre-commercial technology, an effective synergy between experimentation and simulation is fundamental. For this purpose, starting from the SIMFC (SIMulation of Fuel Cells) code set-up and successfully validated for Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells, a new version of the code has been developed for IT-SOFCs. The new release of the code allows the calculation of the maps of the main electrical, chemical, and physical parameters on the cell plane of planar IT-SOFCs fed in co-flow. A semi-empirical kinetic formulation has been set-up, identifying the related parameters thanks to a devoted series of experiments, and integrated in SIMFC. Thanks to a multi-sampling innovative experimental apparatus the simultaneous measurement of temperature and gas composition on the cell plane was possible, so that a preliminary validation of the model on local values was carried out. A good agreement between experimental and simulated data was achieved in terms of cell voltages and local temperatures, but also, for the first time, in terms of local concentration on the cell plane, encouraging further developments. This numerical tool is proposed for a better interpretation of the phenomena occurring in IT-SOFCs and a consequential optimization of their performance.
Highlights
With the increase of pollution resulting from the use of fossil fuels, a significant effort in the research and development of alternative fuels is aimed at all countries on a worldwide level
Electrochemical Impedance Spectra (EIS) has been measured in order to accurately evaluate the internal resistance of the cell
A new version of the SIMFC code has been set-up to allow the simulation of planar co-flow
Summary
With the increase of pollution resulting from the use of fossil fuels, a significant effort in the research and development of alternative fuels is aimed at all countries on a worldwide level. A good number of scientists have investigated into SOFC modelling to estimate physical, chemical and kinetic key performance indicators and have carefully followed the scale-up from a lab-scale to an industrial one These models range from zero-dimensional (0-D) ones, which are lumped models using concentrated parameters and which can only relate to cell global proprieties, to three dimensional (3-D) ones, which are detailed models using distributed parameters and can describe cell local proprieties on the three spatial coordinates. The mentioned models can be defined “white” models, because they are based on explicit physical equations, or at least “grey” models, when based on a semi-empirical approach which integrates a priori knowledge of the physical process and mathematical relations that describe the behavior of the system In the latter case, the model construction foresees at first the set-up of the basic model, the conduction of experimental tests, the calibration and validation of the model on the basis of the experimental results. Both theoretical and experimental results are reported and discussed
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