Performance improvement of direct carbon fuel cell by introducing catalytic gasification process

In this paper, the effects of catalytic gasification on the solid oxide electrolyte DCFC (direct carbon fuel cell) performance are experimentally investigated and analyzed using K, Ca, Ni as catalyst in carbon black and controlling the temperatures of cell and carbon black at 750 °C and 700–1000 °C, respectively. The average power densities are 976, 1473 and 1543 W m−2 respectively for 900, 950 and 1000 °C pure carbon black gasification. Catalytic gasification improves the DCFC performance significantly. For the same performance of pure carbon black, the gasification temperatures decrease about 200, 130 and 150 °C with K, Ca and Ni additives, respectively. The catalytic effects for carbon black gasification with CO2 are: K > Ni > Ca. For typical identical temperature DCFC operating at 750 °C, the power densities of 0.7 V discharging are 1477, 1034 and 1123 W m−2 for the carbon black with K, Ca and Ni additives, respectively. It is possible to reduce the operation temperature of DCFC to the medium temperature range of solid oxide electrolyte (600–800 °C) by introducing catalytic gasification process.