Towards High Power Density Metal Supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cell for Mobile Applications

For use of metal supported SOFC in mobile applications it is important to reduce the thermal mass to enable fast start up, increase stack power density in terms of weight and volume and reduce costs. In the present study, we report on the effect of reducing the support layer thickness of 313 μm in DTU SoA MS-SOFCs gradually to 108 μm. The support layer thickness decrease in the DTU co-sintering MS-SOFC fabrication route results in an increased densification of the support layer and a slight decrease in performance. To mitigate the performance loss, the introduction of gas channels by puncturing of the green tape casted support layer was explored. In summary, it was successfully demonstrated on stack relevant sized 12 cm x 12 cm MS-SOFCs that the support layer thickness could be significantly reduced and that the cell performance could be significantly increased by the introduction of gas channels.