Applicability of molten carbonate fuel cells to various fuels

MCFCs can utilize CO rich and H2 lean fuel, such as gasified biomass or gasified waste as a Pt catalyst is not used and Pt poisoning by CO does not occur. This feature has become very important due to the worldwide CO2 depression requirements. CRIEPI has developed MCFC technologies in line with a governmental program, which mainly focused on natural gas fuel. However, CRIEPI has recently been focussing on technologies for various fuel applications. Single cells and stacks were tested with various gas compositions and showed stable performance even with high CO and high fuel utilization conditions. Gasified biomass or waste can contain many kinds of impurities such as H2S, HCl, HF, NH3, etc. The effects of these impurities were taken into account for single cells, and the permissible limits were estimated.