Research On The Power Generating Performances Of Ethanol On The SOFC With Ce-based Anode

Energy shortage and environmental pollution become serious problems in today society with the rapid development of the world economy. Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), with the advantage of high efficiency, little pollution and no expensive metal catalyst, attracts more and more attention all over the world. However, its wide application is still facing great challenges.The power generation performances of high temperature solid oxide fuel cell with ethanol as fuel are mainly studied in this paper; the laws of its power generation performances with the variation of operating conditions are explored; a new anti-carbon deposition catalyst is prepared, and its resistance to carbon formation is tested. The specific work and conclusions are as the follows:(1) Mixture of ethanol and water vapor is applied to high temperature solid oxide fuel cell based on the ethanol steam reforming reaction. The performances of electrolyte-supported Ni-YSZ/YSZ/LSM with mixture of ethanol and water vapor as fuel are tested. The experimental results show that the cell has a good power generation performance. But carbon deposition is very serious on the anode, which seriously affects the operational stability of the cell, need to be solved.(2) Ce1.16Ni0.36Zn0.32O3-δ(CNZ) catalyst is prepared by citric acid sol-gel method, which can promote ethanol steam reforming reaction and reduce the carbon deposition. It can be seen that catalyst is well crystallized at 1200℃from the XRD spectrum. The characteristic peaks of cubic and orthorhombic phase of ZrO2 can be found in the XRD spectrum, and the cubic phase is the main phase. The microcosmic shape of the catalyst particles is analyzed through TEM, and no apparent reunion.(3) The SOFC with CNZ-YSZ anode is prepared, and its power generation performances are tested. And it is compared with those of the SOFC with Ni-YSZ anode. The comparison results show that the power generation performances of the former are much better than the latter's, and the performances of promoting ethanol steam reforming reaction and reducing the carbon deposition of the former are also much better than the latter's.(4) The power generation performances of the SOFC with CNZ-YSZ anode fed with mixture of ethanol and water vapor are studied at different operating conditions, simultaneously, the laws of which with the variation of operating conditions are studied. The anode exhaust gas is analyzed by the gas chromatography at the condition of open circuit. The surfaces of the cells are characterized by SEM after experiments. The results show that the catalyst can improve carbon formation on the anode obviously.