Research On Properties Of Nickel-based Anode For SOFC

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is a new developed type of fuel cell because of high efficiency, low pollution, fuel wide adaptability and high energy conversion. Today, the research of SOFC gets the world’s attention due to the further depletion of fossil fuels. As one of the core components of SOFC, anode will directly affect the overall performance of SOFC. Improving anode electric properties and resisting carbon deposition performance were studied in the paper. In order to achieve the purpose of optimizing the anode, preparation of NiO@GDC composite anode and nanometer Ru layer on Ni-YSZ anode were prepared.In this paper, NiO@GDC||YSZ||GDC||LSCF anode supported fuel cell cells were prepared by casting method,with NiO@GDC anode with YSZ/GDC electrolyte and LSCF cathode. In the research, it was found that NiO and GDC powers were uniformly distributed in composite powder by sol-gel, and the formation of special structure for the nano-sized NiO particles packages around the GDC. The single cell shows a maximum power density of 400mW/cm2 and impedance spectra of 1.0Ωcm2 at 750℃ 3% water with hydrogen as fuel gas. With wet ethanol steam (nH2O/CH3CH2OH=3:1) as the fuel, the power density and impedance spectra of cell is 198mW/cm2 and 1.5Ωcm2.The Performance single cell decline in a certain range through a long term stability test for running 10h, the polarized resistance is 3.3Ωcm2 after 1h,6Ωcm2 after 10h. The electro-catalytic activity and anti-carbon deposition of cell improved with NiO@GDC anode,but can’t completely restrict anode carbon deposition.A Ru nano catalyst layer on the Ni-YSZ anode surface is got by impregnation method with RuCl3 solution. Ru-Ni-YSZ samples present a good crystalline state on the anode surface, Ru nano particles are uniformly dispersed on the surface and upper hole of Ni-YSZ anode. The best impregnated quantity is 0.8% when the dipping time is 12 h.Used acetone as surfactant, Ru particles present the petal shape, fine flake fiber evenly spread the composition of the network structure making an increase of reactive center. The electrical performance of Ru-NiO-YSZ|| YSZ || Ag single cell shows the performance of 355mW/cm2 and impedance spectra of 0.8Ωcm2 with ethanol fuel at 750 ℃. After running 10 h,the single cell did not appear obvious attenuation, has no obvious carbon on anode surface. The research result reveals that, the electro-catalytic activity and anti-carbon deposition of cell improved obviously with Ru layer.