A New Numerical Study Method of Thermal Stress Distribution and Tortuosity Effectiveness in an Anode Porous Electrode for a Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Authors

  • I.E Fahs Mechanical Engineering Faculty, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
  • M Ghasemi Mechanical Engineering Faculty, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Abstract:

A fuel cell is an electro-chemical tool capable of converting chemical energy into electricity. High operating temperature of solid oxide fuel cell, between 700oC to 1000oC, causes thermal stress. Thermal stress causes gas escape, structure variability and cease operation of the SOFC before its lifetime.The purpose of the current paper is to present a method that predicts the thermal stress distribution in an anisotropic porous anode of planar SOFC. The coupled governing non-linear differential equations, heat transfer, fluid flow, mass transfer, mass continuity, and momentum are solved numerically. A code based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational structural mechanics and finite element method (FEM) is developed and utilized. The code uses the generated data inside the porous anode in order to detect the temperature and the stress distribution using the Darcy’s law and the Navier-Stokes equations. The numerical results used to govern the areas of high values of stresses were higher than the yield strength of materials. The results show that a highest thermal stress occurs at lower corners of the anode. The concentrated temperature occurs at the middle of the electrolyte-anode whereas the maximum pressure occurs at the middle of the upper and lower section of the anode.

Upgrade to premium to download articles

Sign up to access the full text

Already have an account?login

similar resources

A New Sensitivity Study of Thermal Stress Distribution for a Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Converting chemical energy into electricity is done by an electro-chemical device known as a fuel cell. Thermal stress is caused at high operating temperature between 700 oC to 1000 oC of SOFC. Thermal stress causes gas escape, structure variability, crack initiation, crack propagation, and cease operation of the SOFC before its lifetime. The aim of this study is to presen...

full text

Three-dimensional modeling of transport phenomena in a planar anode-supported solid oxide fuel cell

In this article three dimensional modeling of a planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was investigated. The main objective was to attain the optimized cell operation. SOFC operation simulation involves a large number of parameters,   complicated equations, (mostly partial differential equations), and a sophisticated simulation technique; hence, a finite element method (FEM) multiphysics approach ...

full text

Evaluation of solid oxide fuel cell anode based on active triple phase boundary length and tortuosity

An efficient procedure is presented for the evaluation of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) anode microstructure triple phase boundary length (TPBL). Triple phase boundary- the one that is common between three phases of the microstructure- has a great influence on the overall efficiency of SOFC because all electrochemical reactions of anode take place in its vicinity. Therefore, evaluation of TP...

full text

Evaluation of solid oxide fuel cell anode based on active triple phase boundary length and tortuosity

An efficient procedure is presented for the evaluation of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) anode microstructure triple phase boundary length (TPBL). Triple phase boundary- the one that is common between three phases of the microstructure- has a great influence on the overall efficiency of SOFC because all electrochemical reactions of anode take place in its vicinity. Therefore, evaluation of TP...

full text

A two-dimensional numerical model of a planar solid oxide fuel cell

A two-dimensional CFD model of a planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) has been developed.This model can predict the performance of SOFC at various operating and design conditions.The effect of Knudsen diffusion is accounted in the porous electrode (backing) and reaction zonelayers. The mathematical model solves conservation of electrons and ions and conservation ofspecies. The model is formulate...

full text

A Numerical Investigation of the Thermal Stresses of a Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

A typical operating temperature of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is quite high above 750 °C and affects the thermomechanical behavior of the cell. Thermal stresses may cause microstructural instability and sub-critical cracking. Therefore, a joint analysis by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural mechanics based on the finite element method (FEM) was carried out t...

full text

My Resources

Save resource for easier access later

Save to my library Already added to my library

{@ msg_add @}


Journal title

volume 12  issue 1

pages  234- 248

publication date 2020-03-01

By following a journal you will be notified via email when a new issue of this journal is published.

Hosted on Doprax cloud platform doprax.com

copyright © 2015-2023