The 3D Reconstruction and Simulation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Anode

Abstract

The 3D Focused Ion Beam - Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM) technique has been used to study the ceramic microstructures with the accuracy of tens of nanometers. There are several reports about the 3D reconstruction about the Ni-YSZ electrode in SOFC or SOEC mode (1-3). In this work, samples taken from full size, 10×10 cm2, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) single cells were reconstructed with the FIB-SEM tomography. Three samples were chosen from the same production batch, including a cell without reduction, a cell with 5 hours reduction and a cell with 100 hours test with humidified hydrogen, respectively. Figure 1 shows the SEM micrograph and reconstructed anode for the cell after 100 hours test. Different from the button cells, the full size anode-supported SOFC need a strong support layer and a smaller porosity is also acceptable. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) was used to simulate the physical processed in the reconstructed porous electrode. The 3D microstructure was remeshed to cubic voxels for numerical analysis. The triple-phase-boundary length was automatically identified and the parameters in the exchange current density equation were fitted to the polarization curves. Detailed results will be submitted in the full length draft.