Effect of addition method of gadolinia-doped ceria-added FeCr gas diffusion layer on performance of direct-methane solid oxide fuel cells

A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was set up with a porous disk of gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC)-added FeCr as a gas diffusion layer under direct-methane feeding. The addition of GDC was done by mixing GDC powder with FeCr powder before disk fabrication, or by coating GDC powder or impregnating GDC precursor to the surface of the porous FeCr disk. When GDC was added by mixing, the direct-methane SOFC (DM-SOFC) performance degraded very rapidly. When GDC was added by either powder coating or impregnating, the DM-SOFC performance can be relatively stable. Both the current density and the CO2 selectivity with GDC addition by impregnating are larger than those by powder coating.