Performance characteristic of a tubular carbon-based fuel cell short stack coupled with a dry carbon gasifier

• Single cell and short stack for tubular carbon-based fuel cell (CFC) with dry gasifier are presented.
• Operating behavior of tubular CFC with basic operating variables showed stable performance.
• The performance of the 4-cell short stack of CFC with dry gasifier had a maximum power of 29.4 W at 800 °C.

A carbon gasified carbon-based fuel cell (CFC) short stack was fabricated and investigated for generating effective carbon fuel cell reactions. Anode-supported tubular CFC cells with a 45 cm2 active electrode area were used to manufacture the CFC short stack, which was coupled with a dry gasifier induced by a reverse Boudouard reaction. Activated carbon (BET area 1800 m2/g) powder was mixed with K2CO3 powder (5 wt.%) and used to fill a dry gasifier as a solid carbon fuel, and pure CO2 gas was supplied to the gasifier. The CO fuel generated by the reverse Boudouard reaction in the dry gasifier increased the performance of the CFC short stack. The tubular CFC short stack showed a maximum power of 29.4 W at 800 °C. It was operated under a range of operating conditions by changing the operating temperature, flow rate of the pure CO2 and the thermal cycle operation. The results indicate that the fabricated tubular CFC is a promising power generation system candidate for many practical applications, such as residential power generation (RPG) and stationary power systems.