AN ENGINEERING TEST USEFUL IN DEVELOPING GLASS SEALS FOR PLANAR SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELLS

摘要

Developing reliable, hermetic ceramic-to-metal seals has become a key issue to the future success of planar solid oxide fuel cell (pSOFC) technology. In the course of designing and fabricating operating pSOFC stacks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory over the past several years, we have relied on a simple, but extremely useful seal testing technique that allows us to screen through the numerous variables involved in developing glass seals. Here we discuss the design of the test apparatus and the procedure we employed when using the test to analyze the effects of various processing parameters on the hermeticity and durability of our glass seals.