Nano-metal Dispersed Anode of Intermediate-temperature SOFC for High Power Density Operation

Abstract

Improvements of the anode and the fuel side current collector has been carried out in order to increase the output power of the intermediate-temperature (IT) solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) using lanthanum gallate electrolyte. Dispersion of nano-size metal in the cermet anode composed of Sm doped ceria (SDC) and Ni has been tried. As a source material to manufacture the novel anode, SDC powder incorporated with nano-size Ru particles was developed. In order to achieve in-situ production of hydrogen inside the cell-stack, fuel side current collectors were impregnated with catalyst metals such as Ru or Ni. It was demonstrated experimentally that the developed current collectors have high catalytic activity for steam reforming reaction of methane and also have favorable effect to increase the power density. Replacement of the dopant to ceria from Sm to Gd is also tested both for the anode and the fuel side current collector.

Residual Stress Analysis in Lanthanum Gallate-Based Cells before and after Fuel Cell Operation

“…The overview of our project has been reported in previous papers. 10,11 Operation at higher current density generates a large amount of heat and water vapor. It may suffer from increasing of the internal stresses in the cells, and may cause cell cracks and/or delaminations.…”