Internal reforming of methane in a mono-block-layer build solid oxide fuel cell with an embedding porous pipe: Numerical analysis

• A MOLB-type SOFC with different biogas compositions is modeled.
• Internal reforming of methane and water gas shift in the anode side are considered.
• Changes in the SOFC according to the phenomena inside of them are assessed.
• A new configuration for the MOLB-type geometry is proposed.
• Temperature gradients effects in the new configuration are significant.

A mono-block-layer build type (MOLB-type) geometry, composed with trapezoidal cross-section channels for fuel and air, of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), is modeled in this study using a three dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The model is used to obtain the performance of the SOFC considering internal reforming of methane in the anode side with different biogas compositions. From the results obtained, a new configuration for the MOLB-type geometry is proposed. The model takes into account the mass transfer, heat transfer, species transport, chemical and electrochemical reactions, detailed comparisons of species concentration, temperature and electric fields inside the cell analyzed in the present study. Results show that the biogas from local sludge has the lower temperature gradient and more homogeneous current density distributions along of the fuel cell, on the other hand, with the new configuration proposed for the MOLB-type geometry the temperature distribution inside of the fuel cell has lower temperature gradients.