Combined Modelling and Experimental Analysis of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Stack

The proper distribution of reactant species and removal of excess heat and reaction products are fundamental to the success of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack technology. Experimental advances are limited due to the time and expense of varying the parameters over a range of designs and operating conditions. Modelling of SOFCs at the stack scale, as opposed to at the cell scale, has generally been confined to studies of the fluid distribution, neglecting any coupled effects associated with electrochemistry and/or species transport. The present work considers results from an original computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model and compares them with experimentally gathered data obtained for the Julich Mark F stack design. The model couples the equations of momentum, heat and species transport with electrochemical reactions for large SOFC stacks with internal and external manifolds, with calculations being performed in reasonably short computation times. To validate the model, comparisons with voltage and temperature data from an 18-cell stack operating in a test furnace are made. Good agreement is obtained between the model and experiment results, confirming the validity of the methodology for stack design.

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