A reduced-complexity model of the solid oxide fuel cell performance degradation due to the nickel agglomeration in the anode

Abstract

The growth of nickel (Ni) particles in the porous anode is one of the most critical issues in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). It reduces the density of triple phase boundaries (TPBs) and increases the polarization resistance of SOFC. Most of the three-dimensional models, that are intended to simulate this phenomenon in detail, are numerically exhausting. Consequently, they are intractable for online monitoring applications. This work presents a reduced-complexity, two-dimensional, micro structural model as a trade-off between the numerical load and the level of modeling detail. The process of Ni agglomeration is described by applying the power-law coarsening theory. The resulting model is validated by comparing the relative density of TPBs and the cell voltage to the data that were measured on the real SOFC. It is shown that the cell voltage closely fits the measured values, rendering the model capable of calculating the electric performance of a SOFC system over time. The advantage of the proposed model is that it takes lower computational load during the simulation compared to the complex phase field models and is suitable to calculate the degradation of SOFC electric performances over the time.