Determination of Maximum Power to Be Produced by a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cells can generate electrical energy more efficiently and reduce pollutant emissions. They can be applied in many practical engineering cases, such as stationary generation, aircraft, and hybrid fast charging stations. This work uses heuristic and deterministic optimization algorithms coupled with thermodynamics lumped models to determine the main operation variables to achieve maximum power. We found, as expected, that higher pressures improve the power output of one cell. For one cell operating near atmospheric pressure, the output power was 78.56 W; for an operating condition near 5 atm, the output power was 99.21 W. Moreover, the heuristic and deterministic algorithms obtained similar results. The proposed model can be improved with chemical kinetics and the inclusion of cell dimensions to become more precise but offers a base method to estimate the main operating variables of an SOFC.