Numerical simulation of intermediate‐temperature disk type seal‐less SOFC fed with partially reformed methane

Abstract

AbstractSince natural gas containing methane as major component is the most promising fuel for the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), development of a numerical simulation code of the intermediate‐temperature disk‐type seal‐less SOFC for methane fuel case is considered to be very useful. In this study, therefore, we develop a new simulation code for the single cell unit of this type of SOFC fed with partially reformed methane as the fuel gas, based on the existing simulation code for pure hydrogen. We calculate the current density versus single cell voltage (i–V ) curves of the single cell unit for various cases with a wide range of the cell temperature and prereformer temperature conditions and compare them with the corresponding experimental results. From the results, we confirm that the numerically obtained i–V curves coincide very well with the corresponding experimental ones in all cases. The variations of the i–V curves, which depend not only on the cell temperature but also on the prereformer temperature, are successfully simulated with a sufficiently high accuracy, indicating the validity of the newly developed simulation code. We also investigate the detailed influence of the cell temperature and prereformer temperature on the cell performance on the basis of the numerically obtained gaseous partial pressure profiles in the fuel channel and Nernst potential profiles in the cell, and clarify the reason why the prereformer temperature has obvious influence on the cell performance when the cell temperature is low, though the cell performance is almost independent of the prereformer temperature when the cell temperature is high. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.