Dense Membranes for Anode Supported all Perovskite IT-SOFCs

Abstract

During this first year of the project, a post doctoral fellow (Dr. Hrudananda Jena), and two graduate students (Mr. Vinay B. V. Sivareddy, Aswin Somuru), were supported through this project funds. Also, partial support was provided to three undergraduate students (Jonthan Dooley, India Snowden, Jeremy Gilmore) majoring in Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering disciplines. Various wet chemical methods of synthesis have been attempted to prepare perovskite oxide powders with a hope to improve and engineer its properties to meet the requirements of Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (IT-SOFCs) components. Various compounds were synthesized, characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, XPS, electron microprobe and their electrical transport properties were measured by EIS at elevated temperatures and compared. Sonochemical technique (power of ultra sonic probe 750 watt) combined with hydrothermal treatment of precursors for the preparation of calcium hydroxy apatites (Ca-HAp) was used for the first time. Ca-HAp was substituted with Sr and Mg (50% replacement of Ca in Ca-HAp) to study the effect of substitution on Ca-HAp. Calcium hydroxy apatite is a bioceramic and has potential applications as artificial bone, enamel materials. In this study we tried to investigate its use as proton conductors in PC-SOFC. The properties like electrical conductivity, crystal structure, compositions of CaHAp were studied and compared with the natural bone material. The comparison found to be excellent indicating the efficiency of the preparation techniques. The typical value of conductivity measured is 0.091 x 10{sup -6} Scm{sup -1} at 25 C and 19.26 x 10{sup -6} Scm{sup -1} at 850 C with an applied frequency of 100 kHz. The conductivity increases on increasing frequency and temperature and reaches 0.05mS/cm at 500 C. The crystal structure and phase stability of perovskites as well as apatites were investigated with respect to substitution of various iso-valent and alivalent ions to determine the % of solubility in the crystal lattice of perovskite, apatites. Various electrode and electrolyte material compositions were prepared and characterized by XRD, SEM, XPS and electron microprobe. The material compositions were selected based on their thermo-physical properties to achieve compatibility with each other in ideal fuel cell operating conditions. The series of electrode materials investigated are LaGa{sub 1-x}M{sub x}O{sub 3} (M = Mn, Mg, x = 0.1), LaCr{sub 1-x}M{sub x}O{sub 3} (M = Mn, Mg, Co, x=0.1), LaNi{sub 1-x}Fe{sub x}O{sub 3} (0 < x < 0.6) and Gd{sub 1-x}M{sub x}CoO{sub 3} (M=Ca, x=0.1). Attempts were made to prepare proton-conducting perovskites of SrCe{sub 1-x} M{sub x}O{sub 3} (M= Dy, Eu, Er, Tb, x=0.1) by using sonochemical and hydrothermal technique followed by microwave sintering processes. These compositions were prepared characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM and electrical conductivity of the pellets was measured. The interest of low temperature proton conducting electrolyte is to replace the well known oxide ion conducting solid electrolyte in SOFCs, thereby reducing the operating temperature of SOFC to lower temperature (i.e 400-600 C) and named it as PC-SOFC (proton conducting-solid oxide fuel cell).