CFD Performance Study of Planar SOFC using Mixed Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide as Fuel using STAR-CD

Presented is an interesting and substantive paper in the development of effective CFD models. The paper presents a fully three-dimensional, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study, using STAR-CD, performed for a planar, single-cell, cross-flow type, solid oxide fuel cell. The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of the mixing ratio of hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the fuel on the cell performance of the SOFC over a range of inlet temperatures. The electromotive force of the hydrogen rich fuel gas becomes higher than that of the carbon monoxide rich fuel gas at temperatures well within typical SOFC operating limits and its difference enlarges as the temperature increases. At lower temperatures, the electromotive force of the carbon monoxide rich fuel is higher. In addition, the internal voltage drop in the cell decreases as the fraction of carbon monoxide becomes high [1]. The authors of this paper illustrate this through a number of steady, CFD simulations.