Carbonate fuel cell materials and life updates

FUEL 202

Chao-Yi Yuh, cyuh@fce.com, Abdelkader Hilmi, ahilmi@fce.com, Gengfu Xu, gxu@fce.com, Jason Colpetzer, jcolpetzer@fce.com, and Mohammad Farooque, mfarooque@fce.com. FuelCell Energy, Inc, 3 Great Pasture Road, Danbury, CT 06813
The Carbonate Fuel Cell is an ultra-clean and high efficiency power generator. Its operating temperature, ~600-650 C, is considered optimum to facilitate fast fuel cell reaction kinetics, utilize waste heat efficiently in a combined heat and power or bottoming power cycle, and at same time allow use of commercial commodity materials for construction. 250 kW and MW size fuel cell power plants at customer sites are being operated throughout the world, demonstrating significant progress in technology development, manufacturing, product engineering, and field operation. Endurance operation results to date show that the baseline fuel cell construction materials meet the endurance goals. The desired stack life defined by <0.25%/1,000h voltage decay rate have been demonstrated. Material life considerations are well understood and solutions are available to further extend stack life. This paper will review material durability experience as well as future approaches of various cell components, stack hardware and balance-of-plant equipment.