Development of microtubular solid oxide fuel cells design, fabrication and performance.

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are the most efficient energy conversion devices known. Many designs exist, with most current ones based on planar, tubular or so-called hybrid geometries. Tubular designs have many advantages over planar ones, including robustness and simpler sealing. They suffer from somewhat lower area-specific power density and considerably lower volume-specific power density. The miniaturization of tubular cells offers great improvement to both, and more besides. Pushing the boundaries of state-of-the-art manufacture to ever thinner films increases performance further, greatly advancing the long road to large scale commercialisation of SOFCs. This is only possible via the rigorous selection of materials and careful design – both for optimal performance and for mass manufacture. Previous work by the author established the potential of a novel anode fabrication route as well as showing that even un-optimized electron beam physical vapour deposition (EB-PVD) was capable of creating demonstrator cells. In this work these manufacturing processes receive at least two passes of optimization towards both reproducible fabrication and maximising microtubular SOFC performance. The former was achieved by creating statistically significant quantities to assess reproducibility and studying the underlying science, and the latter was investigated in three aspects: gas transport, electrical and electrochemical. The unique oxidation-reduction route creates robust, highly reproducible anodes with excellent through porosity offering as much as 5 orders of magnitude superior gas permeance to published sources. Nickel tubes (Ni200 5.9 mm OD, 125 μm wall thickness, 100 mm long) were oxidised in air at 1,100 for 42 h and reduced in pure hydrogen at four different temperatures. The extremes (400 °C and 1,000 °C) proved sufficiently promising that both were considered in subsequent stages of experiments and analysis for the final anode design. The morphology of the electrolyte (in particular with respect to gas-tightness) is a critical aspect of SOFC miniaturisation, and a challenge to achieve via mass-manufacture-friendly EB-PVD. The yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte deposition was optimized as far as proved possible with the available equipment. While results are more than encouraging there are a number of important concerns to be addressed in future to assure successful commercialization of the design. Accurately measuring gas permeance through the anode-electrolyte tube (sometimes called a half-cell) provides quantified justification. Finally a porous platinum cathode film 300 nm thick was successfully magnetron-sputtered onto the YSZ electrolyte at p Aᵣ100 mTorr, demonstrating the fabrication process and creating complete cells for electrical and electrochemical characterisation.