The Performance of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Based on Methanol Solution

Abstract

The availability of hydrocarbon fuel is a unique advantage of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Methanol is one of the good choices for SOFC fuel because of its wide source, large output and easy storage and transportation. Methanol generally needs the steam reforming process before being used in SOFCs. In this paper, methanol reforming products under different steam-to-carbon ratio and temperature were tested on a commercial reforming equipment. Composition was compared with thermodynamic calculation results. The results show that when the temperature is below 700℃, a large deviation between components and thermodynamic calculation exists, indicating that methanol conversion is incomplete. When the temperature is above 700℃, methanol conversion is generally complete, and the temperature has little effect on the composition under this situation, while the steam-to-carbon ratio becomes the main influence factor. The hydrogen proportion in the products increases with the decrease of the steam-to-carbon ratio. A group of reforming products components were selected and tested on a commercial SOFC, and good performance was obtained, indicating the effectiveness of the optimization, which provides a research basis for the future application of methanol in SOFCs.