Fuel Cell Laboratory

Commercialization of fuel cells is not only critical to the development of power-related industries; it also has much broader economic and infrastructure-related security implications. Fuel cell development can be focused on using syngas derived from fossil fuels such as natural gas, gasoline, diesel, and coal. The Department of Energy is currently strongly encouraging syngas fuel development. Not only does syngas make the economics of large-scale distributed power via fuel cells more favorable, it enhances national energy security through reduced reliance on foreign fuel and increased availability of distributed power, which does not depend on long distance transmission lines. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) seem to be the most viable fuel cell technology to handle syngas, as they are able to handle some of the contaminants present in syngas such as methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO2). However, hydrocarbon-syngas also contains H2S. The presence of this contaminant is one of the major obstacles to implementing a syngas SOFC, since an anode catalyst able to tolerate the presence of H2S without deterioration over time has not been developed. Current materials for SOFC anodes are not able to stand high concentrations of H2S, which means that sulfur needs to be removed from the fuel gas prior to being used in SOFCs. Even though the removal of sulfur from syngas is feasible through commercially available technologies; the removal process results in a more complex and bulky design for integration with SOFCs. Furthermore, sulfur removal processes operate at lower energy conversion efficiencies. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop an anode material that is able to operate stably with sulfur-containing fuel gases for long operating times (40,000 hours for stationary applications and 5000 hours for mobile systems).