The influence of flow direction variation on the performance of a single cell for an anode-substrate flat-panel solid oxide fuel cell

• Published in: International journal of hydrogen energy Vol. 45; no. 39; pp. 20369 - 20381
• Main Authors: Kim, Young Jin, Lee, Min Chul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 07.08.2020
• Subjects: Computational investigation; Flow configurations; Overpotentials; Solid oxide fuel cell; Flow configurations; Overpotentials; Solid oxide fuel cell; Computational investigation
• ISSN: 0360-3199; 1879-3487
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.10.129

This study was performed for a computational investigation of a single cell for an anode-substrate flat-panel solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) to scrutinize the performance related to thermodynamic potential and overpotentials according to three other flow configurations: parallel flow, countercurrent flow, and perpendicular flow. To understand the performance differences based on the typical three flow configurations, the contour plots of temperature, species, and current density were simulated, and the trends and the portions of the diverse overpotentials were analyzed. The calculated results demonstrated that the parallel flow configuration had a tendency to deliver the highest performance and the lowest overpotentials of the three configurations because the temperature and H2 concentration in the parallel flow configuration were changed countercurrently along the anode flow direction. These overpotentials were complemented by interacting with the more uniform current density and the total impedance induced by the opposite directional change for the temperature and H2 concentration. In designing the anode-substrate flat-panel SOFC, the uniformity of flow rate in each channel, which affects significantly to both performance and lifetime of the cell, has been checked. From this numerical analysis result, the design performance of single cell was satisfactorily verified by obtaining negligible flow deviation in each channel of the designed separator deviation, which was less than 3% of the average velocity. •Numerical analysis including electrochemical reaction in a SOFC was performed.•Influence of various flow directions on the cell performance were scrutinized.•Parallel flow configuration had the best performance in terms of temperature and flow.•Flow uniformity was satisfactory by obtaining under 3% deviation of mean velocity.