Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) can efficiently generate electricity from a wide variety of fuels, offering unique advantages over the conventional power generation systems based on combustion. In particular, SOFCs can directly use low-cost and readily available hydrocarbon fuels as the energy source. To be commercially competitive, however, breakthroughs in materials development is required. For instance, a durable and electro-catalytically active anode material or catalyst is needed that can facilitate hydrocarbon reforming and avoiding carbon deposition (coking) for SOFCs to operate stably on hydrocarbon fuels, including natural gas, ethanol, and iso-octane.

Hydrocarbon fuels, especially liquid ones, have several advantages over hydrogen fuel: low-cost, high volumetric energy density, and ease for transportation and storage. Currently, direct-hydrocarbon SOFCs suffer from severe performance degradation due to carbon deposition. In this presentation, we report a promising anode catalyst for SOFCs operated on various hydrocarbon fuels, from methane to ethanol and iso-octane. The catalyst has been successfully applied to both small button cells and tubular cells with an effective area of about 38 cm². For both cases, our cells demonstrate stable performance for continuous operation of >1,000 hours.