Modeling mass transfer in solid oxide fuel cell anode: II. H2/CO co-oxidation and surface diffusion in synthesis-gas operation

Abstract

Following the previous work on comparing performance of Fickian, Stefan-Maxwell and dusty-gas model for mass transfer in single fuel system, this article is focused on the electrochemistry and transport in the anode of solid oxide fuel cell using H2H2OCOCO2N2 hybrid fuel. Under the standard framework of the dusty-gas model combined with the Butler-Volmer equation, it carries out a macroscopic area-specific modeling work. More specifically, two variables of hydrogen current fraction and enhancement factor are well defined and solved for the electrochemical co-oxidation of H2 and CO, and the diffusion equivalent circuit model is introduced to describe more comprehensively the resistance of mass transfer including molecular/Knudsen diffusion and surface diffusion. The model has been validated well in full region of VI performance of an experimental anode-supported button cell. An approximate analytical solution of the hydrogen current fraction is also presented for explicit computation. Comparison between the results by different approaches for the effective diffusivity shows the importance of right mass-transfer modeling.