Materials Chemical Point of View for Durability Issues in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells |
Harumi Yokokawa, Teruhisa Horita1, Katsuhiko Yamaji1, Haruo Kishimoto1, M.E. Brito1 |
Advanced Research Laboratories, Tokyo City University 1National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST) |
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ABSTRACT |
Degradation in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell performance can be ascribed to the following fundamental processes from the materials chemical point of view; that is, diffusion in solids and reaction with gaseous impurities. For SOFC materials, diffusion in solids is usually slow in operation temperatures $800sim1000^{circ}C$. Even at $800^{circ}C$, however, a few processes are rapid enough to lead to some degradations; namely, Sr diffusion in doped ceria, cation diffusion in cathode materials, diffusion related with metal corrosion, and sintering of nickel anodes. For gaseous impurities, chromium containing vapors are important to know how the chemical stability of cathode materials is related with degradation of performance. For LSM as the most stable cathode among the perovskite-type cathodes, electrochemical reduction reaction of $CrO_3$(g) at the electrochemically active sites is crucial, whereas the rest of the cathodes have the $SrCrO_4$ formation at the point where cathodes meet with the gases, leading to rather complicated processes to the degradations, depending on the amount and distribution of reacted Cr component. These features can be easily generalized to other impurities in air or to the reaction of nickel anodes with gaseous impurities in anode atmosphere. |
Key words:
SOFC, Degradation, Cr poisoning, Chemical potential diagrams, Ni-S interaction |
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