Solid oxide fuel cells first generation

Siemens-Westinghouse Power Corporation of Pittsburgh, PA developed and fabricated the first advanced power plant to combine a solid oxide fuel cell and a gas turbine. The microturbine generator was manufactured by Northern Research and Engineering Corporation of Woburn, Mass. The factory acceptance test was completed in April 2000. Southern California Edison will operate the new hybrid plant at The National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California-Irvine. A year of testing in a commercial setting will be performed at this site. The system cycle is expected to generate electric power at 55 % efficiency. 

As one of the first applications in electrochemistry toward AP-XPS, solid oxide fuel cells (SOCs) have been chosen and tested successfully [77-80]. SOCs, as one of the solid state electrochemical devices for electrochemical power, operate under gaseous fuel condition to generate the electrical power at relatively high temperature condition (>700 °C). And, these operating conditions of SOCs, e.g., high temperature and elevated pressure, have been the hurdle for the in situ characterization of surface/interface properties of SOCs. 

Further, the first electrochemical devices based on oxide ion-conducting solid electrolytes, i.e., solid oxide fuel cells, water vapor electrolyzers, and oxygen concentrators, were also developed in the Institute of High-Temperature Electrochemistry. In 1978 the Laboratory of Physical and Chemical Properties of Solid Electrolytes has been renamed to the Solid Electrolytes Laboratory. Different cation-conductive solid electrolytes were investigated in the laboratory. Oxide semiconductor materials with fast ion and electron transport have been studied for different electrode applications in high-temperature electrochemical devices and MHD generators. 

In recent years it has been shown that solid electrolyte fuel cells with appropriate electrocatalytic anodes can be used not only for power generation via oxidation of Hj and CH4, but also for chemical cogeneration , i.e., for the simultaneous production of power and useful chemicals. This mode of operation, first demonstrated for the case of NHj oxidation to combines the concepts of a fuel cell and of a chemical reactor (Figure 13.5). The... 

Various types of fuel cells have been developed to generate power according to the applications and load requirements (Chaurasia, 2000). There are several types of electrolyte, which plays a key role in the different types of fuel cells. It must permit only the appropriate ions to pass between the anode and cathode. The main electrolyte types are alkali, molten carbonate, phosphoric acid, proton exchange membrane (PEM), and solid oxide. The first three are liquid electrolytes, the last two are solids. 

Ceramic fuel cells came up much later, initially with the discovery of the Nernst solid oxide electrolytes in 1899 [9]. Nearly forty years later, the first ceramic fuel cells began operating at 1000 °C, developed by Baur and Preis in 1937 (Farooque Maru, 2001). Since 1945, three research groups (USA, Germany and the USSR) made studies on a few main types of generators by improving their technologies for industrial development. This work yielded the current concepts on fuel cells (Wand, 2006). 

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