Effects of mesh and interconnector design on solid oxide fuel cell performance

•Meshes as a flow-field instead of the conventional channels to reduce the cost.•Porous nickel is found to be inadequate for an effective gas distribution.•Wire meshes alone cannot provide the required contact for the current collection.•Spot welding significantly improves the performance of the wire mesh.

In this study, three different nickel based meshes are investigated as an anode side current collector and flow-field for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) to reduce the fabrication cost. The same meshes are also tested on the conventional interconnectors with machined gas channels for comparison. Eight different short stacks are installed for this purpose. The characterizations of the short stacks are achieved via performance tests together with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy analyses. The experimental results reveal that the woven nickel mesh provides the required current collection and can act as an anode flow-field. It is also found that the spot welding of this mesh significantly improves the cell performance due to the enhanced contact between the mesh and the interconnector. Therefore, the spot welded nickel mesh can be directly employed on the anode interconnector as an effective anode current collector and flow-field without machining gas channels to reduce the SOFC cell/stack fabrication cost.