Saint-Gobain's All Ceramic SOFC Stack: Architecture and Performance

Abstract

Saint-Gobain has developed a unique all ceramic SOFC stack with performance characteristics that make it an attractive solution to the cost and durability challenges of commercializing conventional SOFCs. Saint-Gobain’s all ceramic stacks achieve power density higher than 200 mW/cm2 when operating at 825 °C and 0.75 V/cell. Power degradation is low at 0.2% per kilohour over more than 7,000 hours of testing. Ceramic interconnect stability is verified for >10,000 h using accelerated testing. Good performance under thermal cycling, power cycling and unplanned transients such as fuel or air loss has also been confirmed. With reliable R&D scale manufacturing and targeted testing platforms, Saint-Gobain has increased cell power density by 50% and decreased interconnect resistance by 40% between 2010 and 2012 with further improvements in development.

Coupled Heat Transfer Characteristics of SiC High Temperature Heat Exchanger in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

“…For the high temperature heat exchanger, on the one hand, the increasing stack reaction temperature has the risk of exceeding the temperature tolerance limit of metal heat exchanger represented by superalloy materials. On the other hand, the long-term use of typical commercial metal alloy heat exchanger suffers from the risk of chromium volatilization, which is a known cathodic degradation mechanism, reducing the performance and lifetime of SOFC [2]. Furthermore, the strength of metal alloy heat exchanger decreases rapidly above temperature of 550 °C [3], thus the long-term operation under adverse conditions such as high temperature and oxidation will affect the dynamic service performance of alloy heat exchangers.…”

A computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis design of a microtubular solid oxide fuel cell stack for fixed wing mini unmanned aerial vehicles

“…Water (H 2 O) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) are the only reaction products. Several types of SOFC stacks have been developed to date such as quadrilateral planar [6], all ceramic quadrilateral planar [7], circular planar [8,9], tubular [10], microtubular [11][12][13][14], cone shaped segmented-in-series tubular [15], segment-in-series tubular [16], segmented-in-series flattened tubular [17][18][19], flattened tubular [20,21], honeycomb [22,23], and micro [24] designs. Microtubular SOFC stacks are quite rare in applications compared to planar SOFC stacks.…”

Electrical Conducting Properties of LSF-Based Composites as an Interconnection of Tubular Type of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

“…Tubular type of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is durable under high temperature operation compared to planar type SOFCs where the use of metallic interconnect inevitably deteriorates electrochemical performance by Cr poisoning (1). All-ceramic SOFC stack by Saint Gobain, which can be regarded as a co-fired flat tubular stack, would have advantages in that the least metallic components are used (2). On the other hand, development of ceramic interconnection material has been a barrier to fabricate tubular type SOFCs.…”