U.S. Doe Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: Technical Advances

Abstract

The U. S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy's (FE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), in partnership with private industries, is leading the development and demonstration of high efficiency solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and fuel cell-turbine (FCT) hybrid power generation systems for distributed generation (DG) markets. The DOE FE DG program has three aspects: the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance (SECA), Central Power, and the High Temperature Electrochemistry Center (HiTEC). NETL is partnering with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in developing new directions in research under SECA for the development and commercialization of modular, low cost, and fuel flexible SOFC systems. The SECA initiative, through advanced materials, processing and system integration research and development (R&D) will bring the fuel cell cost to $400 per kilowatt (kW) by 2010 for stationary and auxiliary power unit (APU) markets. The SECA program is currently structured to include six competing industry teams supported by a crosscutting core technology program (CTP). DOE is ultimately concerned with coal-based central power plants. FutureGen is a Presidential initiative to produce hydrogen from coal with zero emissions, and all aspects of the DOE FE R&D programs now support it. The goal is to aggregate SECA-type fuel cells into larger systems and to produce a very high-efficiency megawatt-class FCT hybrid for testing at FutureGen. The low-cost, $400/kW SECA FCT hybrid is a key component to achieving 60 percent efficiency and $850/kW advanced coal based power systems by 2020. Advanced aspects of solid oxide technology are part of HiTEC R&D.