One Chamber Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

D. G. LAMAS; M. D. CABEZAS; R. O. FUENTES; M. G. BELLINO; I. O. FABREGAS; N. E. WALSÖE DE RECA

Cancún, México

Congreso; XV international Materials Research Congress; 2006

Academia Mexicana de Ciencia de Materiales

The fuel cell are electrochemical devices witch can generathe electrical energy from a chemical reaction, mainly the reaction of H2O formation fron H2 and O2. The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFCs) can be operated with hydrocarbons (by example: CH4) natural gas, biogas, besides H2. The main difficulty of these cell in that day are based in an internal reforming of CH4 to H2 and CO in presence of H2O and CO2 by means of Ni catalized, requiring this process high temperatures. Usually, the fuel and the O2 (air) are in separated chambers of SOFCs. Recently, one chamber SOFCs, operating with hydrocarbons and air mixtures as fuel and using selective catalyzers for the reactions in each electrode, have proposed. In the anode, use is made of the enviromental H2O to produce the partial oxidation of hydrocarbons. Differently, from internal reforming it is possible to calalize this rection and intermediated temperature. In this work one chamber SOFCs operating at intermediate temperature are studied. SOFCs have CeO2-Sm2O3 electrolytes, cathodes of (Sm,Sr) CoO3 and anodes of NiO/PbO/CeO2-Sm2O3, all these materials being synthetized and caracterized at CINSO. A power density of approximately 100 mW7cm2 at 600ºC was measured for mixtures with a rate CH4:O2 of 2:1. This result shows the possibility to generated energy with hydrocarbons and air mixtured at intermediated temperature, confirming the feasibility of this type of cell.