Improvement of the Performance for the Anode-Supported SOFCs Available to Purchase

Recently performance tests for the 10-cell stack with 13 cm × 13 cm cells were carried out. Although the cell size was 5 cm × 5 cm in early stage of the developments, we have succeeded in scaling up to 13 cm × 13 cm. A high performance for the 5 cm × 5 cm single cell was obtained. However, the performance of the single stack with the 13 cm × 13 cm cell was extremely low. For a high performance of the 13 cm × 13 cm cell stack, an improvement of the gas seal, an even distribution of the fuel and a mitigation of contact resistances were attempted. For a gas seal, we used mica sheets for the seal between the interconnector and the separator, the interconnector and the frame. For an even distribution of the fuel, we designed the channel of the gas flow by using the computational calculation on the thermo-fluid dynamics. For the mitigation of the contact resistances, we analyzed a property of a warp of the cell in detail. Using the findings of the analyses we weighted the cell stack appropriately. On the basis of the result, the performance of the 10-cell stack with 13 cm × 13 cm cell was improved.