Characterisation of a Planar Solid Oxide Cell Stack Operated at Elevated Pressure

As the global and local energy production becomes more dependent on intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar, efficient and reversible conversion of electricity to storable fuels becomes increasingly important. Solid oxide cells (SOCs) are interesting in this context since they can be operated either as electrolysers (SOEC) to convert electricity to fuels such as hydrogen or methane, and as fuel cells (SOFC) to convert fuels to electricity. Both productivity and conversion efficiency can be improved if the SOC operation pressure can be increased from ambient pressure to 10-30 bar.

Here we characterize an SOC stack operated at pressures from ambient pressure to 10 bar without fluctuations in the steam supply. The pressure dependency of stack temperature, cell area specific resistance (ASR), current-voltage (iV) curves, stack impedance spectra and pressure drop across the stack and heat exchangers is analyzed and the expected impact of pressurization on the hydrogen production cost is evaluated.