CFD analysis of a novel symmetrical planar SOFC design with micro-flow channels

This paper presents a novel design to mitigate fuel/gas feeding problem in bi-electrode supported cell (BSC) design. The traditional electrodes in BSC are replaced by the symmetrical electrodes notched with micro-channels to enhance fuel/gas flows while keeping the compact design of traditional BSCs. A three-dimensional mathematical model is developed to examine the performance of three BSC designs. Results indicate that the performances of the BSC with micro-channels (BSC-MC) are consistently better than those of BSC with homogeneous electrodes (homo-BSC) and BSC with heterogeneous electrodes (hetero-BSC). A prominent advantage of BSC-MC design is that it may obtain a very good performance under relative low fuel/gas pressure losses conditions through electrodes while homo-BSC and hetero-BSC require very high fuel/gas pressure losses in order to achieve comparable performances, which might be prohibited in practical SOFC systems.