Additive Manufacturing of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (AM-SOFC) Stacks

Abstract

The Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an electrochemical energy-conversion device which offers tremendous promise for delivering high electrical efficiency and significant environmental benefits in terms of fuel flexibility, as well as clean and efficient electric power generation. However, the state-of-the-art SOFC cell currently involves expensive and time-consuming multi-step manufacturing processes including tape casting, screen printing, shaping, lamination, sintering, etc. In addition, SOFC stacks are usually assembled with pre-fabricated cells, metal interconnects, and glass-ceramic sealing. These indispensable components add extra layers of complexity to the stack structure’s fabrication and maintenance, significantly increasing the size and weight of the final product. These intrinsic limitations on the current planar stack cannot be easily removed by traditional manufacturing processes. However, as additive manufacturing (AM) technologies start to mature and show increasing market penetration, it lends itself admirably to breaking the limits on high-power-density SOFC stack manufacturing. Storagenergy’s SOFC project is developing an all-ceramic AM-SOFC by a high-speed AM process of multiple materials. The developed technology allows the fabrication of robust and compact AM-SOFC stacks with unique features such as monolithic architecture with embedded novel micro flow channels and thinner elements (anode, cathode, electrolyte, and interconnect) by only three production steps (3D printing, sintering, and catalyst infiltration) without the need for subsequent assembly of individual layers and indispensable components. This simplification of the fabrication process is expected to reduce the cost of the SOFC and increase SOFC design flexibility and manufacturing reliability.