Modeling the Influence of Carbon Spheres on the Porosity of SOFC Anode Materials

The influence of fabrication pressure and other ceramic processing variables, including volumetric loading fraction and the particle size ratio of pore-forming agents, on the porosity of fabricated ceramic anodes, was investigated using an integrated experimental approach with mathematical modeling to differentiate the impacts of each parameter. Despite historic observation of the properties of ceramic bodies, to date, there is a lack of available models to accurately interpret the ceramic properties as a function of the processing variables. Herein, we focus on the open porosity of the solid oxide fuel cell anode prepared from NiO/YSZ (nickel oxide/yttria stabilized zirconia) as the ceramic powder and using CMS (carbon microspheres) as a pore-forming agent. A range of pore-former volumetric blend ratios (4.4%-44.6%) and different particle size ratios between NiO/YSZ and CMS (11.27, 4.29, and 0.26) were used, whereas the influence of the applied uni-axial fabrication pressure on the open porosity of sintered anode was studied in a range of atmospheric pressure up to 40 MPa. A good agreement was observed between the proposed model and the experimental data, implying that the approach could be used to determine the significant processing parameters to fabricate ceramics with desired porosity. The model could also be used to interpret the physical basis of pore formation when using a pore-forming agent in a fabricated porous ceramic body.