Experimentation with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells with fuel electrode fed with different syngas fuel compositions obtained from gasification processes

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are since the 50’s one of the more efficient devices for producing electric power from fuels through chemical reactions. Because of its low emissions, depending on the use or not of hydrocarbons as fuel, SOFCs systems are regarded as one the most respectful with the environment. Nevertheless to make the whole process even more environmentally friendlier the fuel used to feed the anode can be obtained by greener processes such as gasification. Syngas is mainly obtained from gasification of coal, but in the actual context of searching lower impact ways to produce fuel, the gasification of biomass or, also, the co-gasification of coal and biomass both together appears to be a good way to produce syngas from a renewable energy source such as biomass. The technology of SOFCs has been proved to be capable of working with a wide range of fuels. The question now is about syngas: are all kinds of syngas a suitable fuel for feeding SOFCs? This work deals with that matter. The three syngas, with different compositions provided by Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente (ENEA) are analyzed and then modified in order to avoid possible future carbon deposition problems, finally they are tested in a single planar SOFC. Two of them are obtained for gasification of different coals and a third one is obtained from the co-gasification of coal and biomass pellets. Finally the performances of the single planar fuel cell are evaluated using the impedances analysis, the polarization curves, and the analysis of the anode exhaust gases with a spectroscope.