Numerical study on electric characteristics of solid oxide fuel cells

Numerical simulations are performed in both planar and tubular geometries of a solid oxide fuel cell to study the electric characteristics. The Navier–Stokes equations are solved with an electrochemical model developed in this paper, which is a generalized, three dimensional complete polarization electrochemical model for solid oxide fuel cells with various geometries. This study conducts detailed analyses of the electric polarizations for both planar and tubular solid oxide fuel cells and presents the characteristics of the density and the potential distribution in the electric components for the planar co-flow solid oxide fuel cell. The ohmic heats in the planar and tubular configuration solid oxide fuel cell are also compared and discussed.