Effects of Current Collector Positions on Temperature and Reactive Current Distributions in a Micro-Tubular Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell

Abstract

A two-dimensional tubular model of a Ni+YSZ electrode supported micro-tubular solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) was developed to clarify its temperature distribution on high temperature steam electrolysis. The entropy change of SOEC is endothermic and the temperature distribution is more complex than that of SOFCs. In addition, in the micro-tubular SOEC, large bias of reaction distributions can be occurred by current collecting position, and it will lead further complicated thermal transport phenomena and big thermal distributions. Therefore, in this model, heat, mass, electric charge transport and electrochemical reaction were calculated simultaneously. The overpotential and the temeprature change were validated by experimental i-V curves and temperature changes of micro-tubular SOEC. The numerical results suggest that effects of current collector position were not small and cannot be ignored in micro-tubular SOEC operation.