Direct Simulation of Transport Properties from Three-Dimensional (3D) Reconstructed Solid-Oxide Fuel-Cell (SOFC) Electrode Microstructures

Abstract

A well-known approach to develop a high efficiency solid-oxide fuel-cell (SOFC) consists of extracting the microstructure and transport properties such as volume fractions, internal surface area, geometric connectivity, effective gas diffusivity, effective electronic conductivity and geometric tortuosities from three-dimensional (3D) microstructure of the SOFC electrodes; thereafter, performing the SOFC efficiency calculations using previously mentioned quantities. In the present work, dual-beam focused ion beam - scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) is applied on one of the SOFC cathodes, a lanthanum strontium manganite (LSM) electrode, to estimate the aforementioned properties. A framework for calculating transport properties is presented in this work. 3D microstructures of LSM electrode are reconstructed from a series of two-dimensional (2D) cross-sectional FIB-SEM images. Volume percentages of connected, isolated and dead-ends networks of pore and LSM phases are estimated. Different networks of pore and LSM phases are discretized with tetrahedral elements. Finally, the finite element method (FEM) is applied to calculate effective gas diffusivity and electronic conductivity of pore and LSM phases, respectively. Geometric tortuosities are estimated from the porosity and effective transport properties. The results obtained using FEM are compared with the finite volume method (FVM) results obtained by Gunda et al. [J. Power Sources, 196(7), 35929(2011)] and other numerical results obtained on randomly generated porous medium. Effect of consideration of dead-ends and isolated-ends networks on calculation of effective transport properties is studied.