An Effectiveness Model for Electrochemical Reactions in Electrodes of Intermediate-Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

• A reaction/charge transport problem is solved for active layers of IT-SOFC electrodes
• The symmetric Butler-Volmer equation is adopted for current-overpotential relation
• Electrochemical effectiveness is decomposed into the base and relative effectiveness
• A simple correlation is proposed for accurate retrieval of relative effectiveness data
• The validity and applicability of the proposed effectiveness model is discussed

A new effectiveness model is proposed for efficiently predicting the electrochemical performance of electrodes in intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs). An electrochemical reaction/charge transport problem is formulated based on the assumptions that the fuel cell processes in the active functional layers occur under uniform operating conditions and that the transfer current-overpotential relation follows the symmetric Butler-Volmer equation. The electrochemical effectiveness is calculated for various Thiele modulus values, and a simple correlation is developed for retrieving these effectiveness factor data. Finally, the validity of the effectiveness model is demonstrated by comparing the results with those obtained from the detailed electrode microscale model.