To study the effect of geometric parameters on the performance of a typical cone-shaped tubular segmented-in-series solid oxide fuel cell stack

Abstract

Long electric current transfer path has been a common problem with tubular series cells. Cone-shaped tubular segmented-in-series solid oxide fuel cells (SIS-SOFCs) have attracted much attention due to their special advantages, such as short electric current path, unsealed requirement, small thermal stress, low operating electric current, and so on. In this paper, the electrochemical and multiphysics coupling model of a typical SIS-SOFC is developed. Then, the relationship between the geometric structure and the working characteristics within the SIS-SOFC is investigated. The results show that the size of the active reaction region in the downstream cone-shaped cell depends on the length of the interconnectors. Thus, increasing the length of the interconnectors increases the active reaction area of the series cell while decreasing the current transmission path. The ratio between the interconnector length and total cell length equals 0.5 is found to be a proper geometric factor for the SIS-SOFC to achieve a good overall performance and reaction uniformity.