Manufacturing method for tubular molten carbonate fuel cells and basic cell performance

The combination of syngas from gasification and high-temperature fuel cells is a candidate for high-efficiency power generation systems. Reducing the production cost of fuel cells and gas-cleaning devices is an important issue for commercial application. This study focuses on molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), which are relatively durable against poisoning by impurities in syngas. However, the development of MCFC systems has come to a halt in Japan because the production cost of MCFCs made them commercially infeasible. To reduce the production cost significantly, a tubular MCFC has been developed instead of the conventional planar type. The tubular MCFC requires neither a complex separator nor cell components with high dimensional accuracy. However, there have been no reports about tubular MCFCs because the electrolytes used for these MCFCs are liquid, which makes it difficult to fasten the fuel cell stack without a fastener. In this study, a fastening method is developed by using the self-shrinking effect of anodes during sintering. Using this technique, the tubular MCFC was successfully manufactured. The results of a power generation test for 1000 h show that the cell voltage was kept stable. Moreover, the cell performance was close to that of a conventional planar MCFC.