Sunfire Industrial SOC Stacks and Modules

Abstract

In the past years, sunfire has increased its product portfolio and production depth. Four product classes (single stacks and stack modules for SOFC and SOEC) are tackling several markets (offgrid, on-grid, mobile). A ceramic center and a new production facility were inaugurated. The R&D activities are strongly driven by market requirements. With the new SOC stack electrolysis operation is introduced aside fuel cell operation. Furthermore, an increase in power density and a reduction of cost was achieved under the constraint of using standard industrial materials. Latest results of SOC single stack testing like I-V curves and reversible operation will be presented. The engineering and testing of stack modules in the power range >25 kW will be also shown. Company PortraitStarting to produce fuel cell stacks by 2006, sunfire established a vast experience of the SOFC technology. Besides the continuous economic growth, the last years led to a focus shift onto a new field of application, combining SOFC and SOEC into a universal -so called SOC stack which is capable of both transforming chemical energy into electrical energy and vice versa. Market demand shows, that besides the "classic" SOFC fields of application like remote and mobile power generation e.g. in automotive, ships or at pipeline control stations, the SOC addresses the need for electricity storage and fluctuation buffering which came up with the fast rise of sustainable energy production in industrial countries. Acting as an electrolyser when there is an oversupply of wind-or solar power, the SOC turns electrical energy into chemically bound energy in the form of H 2 , which can be stored in almost unlimited amounts. In the moment the electricity demand exceeds the supply, SOC is turned from electrolyser to fuel cell mode and converts the gas bound energy back to electricity. Recently there are plenty of requests of multinational companies that want to include SOC products into their portfolio. Hereby, sunfire can act as a vendor of stacks, stack modules with already integrated gas supply or whole systems in the power range of one to several hundred kW. Recently, a company-owned pilot plant for a power-to-liquid process is put into operation. With the use of SOEC technology, the plant produces liquid fuels and other valuable products like highly purified and customized waxes for chemical industry.Besides the focus on R&D in both stack and integration topics, the development and optimization of production processes play a role with increasing importance for the company. As the stack production will exceed the number of 1000 stacks/a. in 2015, there is a tremendous potential for production automation, which will subsequently lead to 10.1149/06801.0125ecst ©The Electrochemical Society ECS Transactions, 68 (1) 125-129 (2015) 125 ) unless CC License in place (see abstract). ecsdl.org/site/terms_use address. Redistribution subject to ECS terms of use (see 155.69.4.4 Downloaded on 2015-08-23 to IP

Long‐Term Behavior of a Solid Oxide Electrolyzer (SOEC) Stack▴

“…The knowledge gap for SOEC stack degradation in reversible SOFC/SOEC operation mode is even wider. Few relevant degradation results can be found in [19][20][21][22][23][24]. Therefore, this paper reports and compares the long-term behavior of a SOC stack in SOFC and reversible SOFC/SOEC operation.…”

Analysis of Electrochemical Degradation Phenomena of SOC Stacks Operated in Reversible SOFC/SOEC Cycling Mode

“…[12][13][14] Moreover, the increasing need for energy storage via H 2 has fostered the research activities concerning SOC stack degradation in reversible SOFC/SOEC cycling operation mode. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] However, the published stack degradation results during reversible cycling operation and the interpretations differ strongly from each other. The corresponding power degradation values in SOFC mode range from −0.5%/kh to −22%/kh and in SOEC mode from +0.1%/kh to +68%/kh.…”

Internal Partial Oxidation Reforming of Butane and Steam Reforming of Ethanol for Anode‐supported Microtubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

“…Due to the conduction of oxide ions (O 2− ) through an electrolyte and the occurrence of electrochemical oxidation in an anode at high temperature above 600 °C, SOFCs can, in principle, directly use not only hydrogen but also hydrocarbon and alcohol fuels. Since 2011, Kyocera has successfully commercialized residential combined heat/power systems using flatten‐tubular anode‐supported SOFCs ; other manufacturers are also developing stationary SOFC systems using planar and tubular SOFCs . These systems have an external steam reformer to convert natural gas to hydrogen in advance.…”