NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF A FLAT-TUBE HIGH POWER DENSITY SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELL

摘要

In recent years, fuel cells have been deemed to be a low-polluting fuel consuming power-generation technology with high efficiency. They are an important technology for a potentially wide variety of applications. Among fuel cell types, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) have the recognized potential to be one of most promising distributed power generation technologies. Tubular SOFCs have evolved over last two decades, and work is currently underway to reduce cell cost toward commercialization. Further SOFC development is needed in order to achieve a commercially competitive cell and stack cost. A flat-tube high power density (HPD) SOFC is a newly designed cell of a different geometry from a tubular SOFC. It has increased power density, but still maintains the tubular SOFC¡¯s beneficial feature of secure sealing. In this study, heat/mass transfer and fluid flow in a single flat-tube high power density SOFC is investigated using a self-developed code in FORTRAN. The temperature fields, concentration fields and velocity fields in different chambers of a flat¨Ctube HPD SOFC are studied.Based on the temperature fields and species concentration fields, an overall electrical performance of a flat-tube high power density SOFC is performed using a commercial tool for electrical circuit analysis. The effects of the stack chamber numbers, stack shape and other stack features on the performance of the flat-tube HPD SOFC are also studied. The results show that the performance of a flat-tube HPD SOFC is better than a tubular SOFC with the same active cell surface, and that increasing the chamber number can improve the overall performance and power/volume rating for a flat-tube HPD SOFC. The study helps to design and optimize the flat-tube HPD SOFC for practical applications so as to achieve widespread utilization of SOFCs. In this study, one interesting application example for the SOFC is also presented.