Investigation of Performance of SCN-1 Pure Glass as Sealant Used in SOFC

Abstract

As its name implies, self-healing glass seal has the potential of restoring its mechanical properties upon being reheated to stack operating temperature, even when it has experienced some cooling induced damage/crack at room temperature. Such a self-healing feature is desirable for achieving high seal reliability during thermal cycling. On the other hand, self-healing glass is also characterized by its low mechanical stiffness and high creep rate at the typical operating temperature of SOFCs. Therefore, from a design’s perspective, it is important to know the long term geometric stability and thermal mechanical behaviors of the self-healing glass under the stack operating conditions. These predictive capabilities will guide the design and optimization of a reliable sealing system that potentially utilizes self-healing glass as well as other ceramic seal components in achieving the ultimate goal of SOFC. In this report, we focused on predicting the effects of various generic seal design parameters on the stresses in the seal. For this purpose, we take the test cell used in the leakage test for compliant glass seals conducted in PNNL as our initial modeling geometry. The effect of the ceramic stopper on the geometry stability of the self-healing glass sealants is studied first. Then we explored the effect of various interfaces such as stopper and glass, stopper and PEN, as well stopper and IC plate, on the geometry stability and reliability of glass during the operating and cooling processes.