Fabrication of the Components for SOFC

• Main Authors: Tai-sheng Haung, 黃代聖
• Other Authors: Yih-Lin Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/rantux

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 機械工程系 === 94 === Recently the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is developed rapidly because global resources are becoming less and less. SOFCs are more energy-efficient than combustion engines. There are a lot of challenges and improvements in this technology. In this study we plan to manufacture a planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) which contains one membrane electrode assembly (MEA). The diameter of the SOFC is 80 mm and the dimension of MEA is 40mm x 40mm. Furthermore, a mechanical sealing design is investigated to provide possible solution for our prototype. In this work, the main component of MEA, electrolyte, is manufactured by tape casting. The anode and cathode are coated on both sides of electrolyte by screen printing. Additionally, we use the multilayer casting to manufacture flatter electrolyte. Furthermore, we fabricated the MEAs of anode-support and electrolyte-support. We successfully manufactured the MEA whose size was 40 mm x 40 mm and the active area was 39 mm x 39 mm. Furthermore, we fabricated the large-area electrolyte whose dimension is 100mm X 100mm. In the laminating process, the parameters including the temperature, the pressure, and pressing time were investigated. When the setting was 90℃, 15 Kg/cm², and 40 minutes, the laminating quality was guaranteed. In tape casting, we used multilayer casting to manufacture the electrolyte. This method provided good adhesion and flatter component. For manufacturing the MEAs of anode-support and electrolyte-support, we combined two materials of the electrolyte and anode. The components were co-sintered at high temperature. Unfortunately, the relative density was 82% which didn’t meet our requirement. In the sealing design, we plan to use the deformation of the metal gasket to seal our prototype. For testing the mechanical sealing, we designed three types of sealing models to test the sealing performance. Two gasket materials were tested – copper and 420 stainless steel. For sealing the three models, we used the compressive force to seal in this study. The sealing performance depended on the deformation of the gaskets. The thicknesses of the testing gaskets are 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 mm. According the results, the type 3 of which the gap is 0.1mm between the grove and the protrudent key, has lower leakage. In this experiment, the thickness of the gasket is 0.1mm. The pressure drops from 5 Kg/cm² to 4.8 Kg/cm² in 24 hours.