Performance analysis of solid oxide fuel cell using reformed fuel

Abstract

Fuelling SOFC with reformed fuel can be beneficial due to it being cheaper compared to pure hydrogen. A biomass fuel can be easily modeled as a reformed fuel, as it can be converted into H2 and CO using gasification or biodegradation, the main composition of product from a reformer. Hence in this study it is assumed that feed to the fuel cell contains only H2 and CO. A closed parametric model is formulated. Performance is analyzed with changes in temperature, pressure and fuel ratio; considering the possible voltage losses, like ohmic, activation, mass transfer and fuel crossover. Performance curves consisting of operating voltage, fuel utilization, efficiency, power density and current density are developed for both pure hydrogen and mixture of CO and H2. Variations of open circuit voltage with temperature, power density with current density, operating voltage with current density and maximum power density with fuel utilization are also evaluated.