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In-situ temperature monitoring directly from cathode surface of an operating solid oxide fuel cell

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-10-30, 10:16 authored by Erdogan Guk, Manoj Ranaweera, Vijay Venkatesan, Jung-Sik Kim, WooChul Jung
The electrode temperature distribution of a solid oxide fuel cell is an important parameter to consider for gaining better insight into the cell performance and its temperature-related degradations. The present efforts of measuring gas channel temperatures do not accurately reveal the cell surface temperature distribution. Therefore, the authors propose a cell-integrated multi-junction thermocouple array to measure the electrode temperature distribution from a working solid oxide fuel cell. In this work, the authors deposited a thin film/wire multi-channel thermal array on the cathode of a commercially-sourced solid oxide fuel cell. The temperature of the cell was measured under varying fuel compositions of hydrogen and nitrogen. The multi-channel array showed excellent temperature correlation with the fuel flow rate and with the cell's performance whilst commercial thermocouples showed a very dull response (10 ~ 20 °C discrepancy between thermocouples and the multi-channel array). Furthermore, cell temperature measurements via the multi-channel array enabled detecting potential fuel crossover. This diagnostic approach is applied to a working solid oxide fuel cell, yielding insights into key degradation modes including gas-leakage induced temperature instability, its relation to the theoretical open circuit voltage and current output, and propagation of structural degradation. It is envisaged that the use of the multi-thermocouple array techniques could lead to significant improvements in the design of electrochemical energy devices, like fuel cells and batteries and their safety features, and other hard-to-reach devices such as inside an internal combustion engine or turbine blades.

Funding

Modelling Accelerated Ageing and Degradation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (MAAD-SOFC)

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

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Novel diagnostic tools and techniques for monitoring and control of SOFC stacks - understanding mechanical and structural change

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

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Brain Pool Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2019H1D3A2A01101483)

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Department

  • Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering

Published in

Applied Energy

Volume

280

Publisher

Elsevier Ltd

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Elsevier

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Applied Energy and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116013.

Acceptance date

2020-10-08

Publication date

2020-10-21

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

0306-2619

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Jung-Sik Kim. Deposit date: 29 October 2020

Article number

116013

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