Electrical Performance and Carbon Deposition Differences between the Bi-Layer Interconnector and Conventional Straight Interconnector Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Min Yan,Qiuyang Chen,Qiuwang Wang,Jaideep Pandit,Pei Fu,Min Zeng

doi:10.3390/en7074601

Abstract

Carbon deposition considered in a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) model may be influenced by the operating voltage, inlet water/methane ratio, working temperature and pressure, inlet molar fraction of fuel and so on. The effects of these parameters in a planar SOFC implementing a novel bi-layer interconnector are not well understood. This paper is focused on the numerical study of carbon deposition and electrical performance of a bi-layer interconnector planar SOFC. The results illustrate that the electrical performance of the bi-layer interconnector SOFC is 11% higher than that of the conventional straight interconnector SOFC with initial state. After 120 days of operation, the electrical performance of the bi-layer interconnector SOFC has a slight decrease and more carbon deposit because of the increased electrochemical reaction rate. However, these differences minimize if higher operating voltages are involved.

Highlights

With the industrialization of modern society, the world is faced with the serious problem of environmental pollution
0.1 A/cm2, there have some differences: the voltage of bi-layer interconnector solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is higher than that of conventional models if the models are working with the same current density
Unsteady models were developed in this paper to study the electrical performance and carbon deposition of conventional interconnector SOFC and bi-layer interconnector SOFC

Summary

Introduction

With the industrialization of modern society, the world is faced with the serious problem of environmental pollution. There are several reasons which influence the efficiency of SOFCs [2], amongst which are the structure of the interconnector and carbon deposition on the anode. Both of these are extremely important since they can influence the state of flow, as well as the mass transfer in the gas channel and porous layer. Many researchers have focused heavily on these two areas: For the optimization of the interconnector, a protruding design was proposed by Li et al [3] to enhance the mass transfer ability of the gas channel. The results show that the bi-layer interconnector could cause more carbon deposition due to more electrochemical reactions were include

Geometric Model

Mathematical Model

C C dt dt Vtotal

Original Steady State Electrical Properties

Unsteady State Performance of Models with Different Interconnectors

Conclusions