Solid oxide fuel cells based on nano-structured electrodes

Abstract

This Final Year Project report will capture and documented all the experimental results on Solid Oxide Fuel Cell. The main investigation will be on the performances and long term stability of fuel cell with introduction of different type of catalysts. The experiments will base on half cell instead of full cell and focus will be on cathode electrode. On one side of the electrolyte, the working electrode is represented by cathode electrode while on the opposite side, the counter electrode is represented by reference electrode. The selected materials throughout for this experiment are lanthanum strontium manganite (LSM) for cathode electrode, yittria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) for electrolyte and platinum (Pt) paste for counter electrode.

For this project, the catalysts used were palladium (Pd) solution, cobalt (Co) solution, manganese (Mn) solution, palladium cobalt (PdCo) solution, palladium manganese (PdMn) solution and palladium silver (PdAg) solution. Operating temperature and electrical current will be supply at 850°C and 200mA/cm2 respectively. The whole process will take about 44.5hours. Investigation on their polarization values and impedance values will be carried out. Microstructure investigation on cathode electrode will also be carried out and discussed.