Numerical model for evaluation of the effects of carbon deposition on the performance of 1 kW SOFC stack – a proposal

Thermal Processes Department, Institute of Power Engineering, Warsaw, Poland

^* Corresponding author: Konrad.Motylinski@ien.com.pl

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cells are high-temperature electrochemical energy conversion devices which operate at elevated temperature (600- 900°C). As a result it possible to internally reform the incoming fuel, thus except hydrogen and carbon monoxide, SOFCs can be fuelled with various hydrocarbonaceous gases. The presence of carbon-containing compounds in the fuel might result in the formation and of carbon in a form of a thin layer on the SOFC anode. The carbon deposition process depends on the thermodynamic conditions, such as temperature and steam to carbon ratio. The higher the temperature, the longer period of time is required for the solid carbon particles to deposit on the porous surface. The correlation used for this study is based on creating the ternary diagrams or Gibb’s diagrams. The presented results cover a first stage of the analysis of the carbon deposition processes in SOFCs, focusing mainly on the numerical study of the changes of the fuel cell performance due to degradation of anode performance. A dedicated model of SOFC was proposed. It accounts for the diminution of the active area and/or deactivation by the increase of the resistance of the anode. The article presents the proposed methodology and the numerical approach.