Degradation Phenomena of Reforming Catalyst in DIR-MCFC

Abstract

Recently, energy consumption is increasing with the population growth of developed countries and developing countries, and an exhausting of petroleum resources has become a big problem worldwide. In addition, CO2, SOX and NOX which are toxic substances emitted when these resources are used, cause environmental polluting problem such as global warming and acid rain, etc. From these situations, high efficiency, energy-saving and environmental-saving power source is needed in recent years, and fuel cell can solve these problems. Therefore, researching, developing and commercializing on fuel cell are promoted in many countries. Fuel cell is categorized by the difference of its electrolyte and operating temperature. In this research, we use Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells (MCFC) which uses a molten carbonate as the liquid electrolyte. MCFC is expected as a distributed power station and the CO2 concentrator .Generally, fuel cell performances are evaluated by I-V performance, cell resistance and gas chromatography, etc. for which fuel cell only generate by supplying fuel gas and oxidant gas to cell. Generally, although gas chromatography is utilized only to detect the gas crossover (it is gas leakage phenomenon between two poles through electrolyte) on fuel cell development, the performance of reforming catalyst in the anode channel in operation is evaluated by gas chromatography on R&D of Direct Internal Reforming-Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (DIR-MCFC). Moreover, MCFC installed the segmented electrode is evaluated about the gas crossover and the utility of the segmented electrode by a gas chromatography and the image measurement technique. This chapter introduces the use method of a gas chromatograph through the degradation factor of reforming catalyst in DIR-MCFC.