Development of high performance and low‐cost solid oxide fuel cell stacks: Numerical optimization of flow channel geometry

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stacks with small volume and weight are essential to obtain higher specific and volumetric power densities as an alternative to conventional SOFC stacks with interconnectors having machined flow channels. This can be achieved by employing thin sheet interconnectors with flow channels formed by stamping methods rather than conventional machining of thick bulk materials. Besides the determination of process parameters providing defect free manufacturing of the desired channel design, the channel geometry is also significant for the cell performance. This study, therefore, focuses on the performance based parametric optimization of those flow channels in SOFCs by numerical simulations. In this respect, the effects of rib width, channel depth and rib angle on the cell performance are numerically investigated after the model validation with experimental results. The optimum rib width, channel depth and rib angle are determined to be 0.5 mm, 0.5 mm and 90°, respectively, within the parameter ranges considered in this study. In addition, the rib width is turned out to be the most effective parameter on the cell performance, while the cell performance almost remains unchanged for different channel depths.