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Project leader: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christos Argirusis, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maus-Friedrichs
Funding period: 09/2014 - 08/2017
Funding body: BMBF
Funding code: ENMAT-514-056
Researcher: M.Sc. John Meuthen
Laboratory rooms: 321; 322; 0.7 (CZM)
Fuel cells generate electricity directly from the energy chemically stored in gases. This avoids losses that can occur in conventional thermal and mechanical conversion processes during electricity generation, e.g. in heat engines. One of the potential applications is stationary decentralized power generation, both for domestic energy supply and for industrial CHP and electricity supply. High-temperature fuel cells, especially those with a solid oxide electrolyte (SOFC), are particularly suitable for this area of application; due to their operating temperature of over 600 °C, they can also convert carbon-containing gases such as methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO) in addition to hydrogen.
The use of SOFCs for power generation is currently still severely limited by the service life and robustness of the fuel cell stacks. For applications of this type, service lives of at least 5, but preferably 10 years are required. So far, the operating experience for fuel cell systems is a maximum of 30,000 operating hours for SOFC components and systems (including replacement of SOFC cells) or 40,000 hours (system at HEXIS and short stack at FZ Jülich). This shows that today's fuel cell components are not yet suitable for long-term, reliable operation beyond 4 years (approx. 35,000 hours). They show a continuous loss of performance during operation ('degradation').
The aim of this project is to develop a deeper understanding of the degradation phenomena in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) in cooperation with Germany's leading research groups in the field of SOFC. The work should make a significant contribution to achieving a service life of SOFC systems of up to 10 years (i.e. around 100,000 hours of service life).