Zhijun Liu,1 Yucun Zhou,1 Weilin Zhang,1 Jie Hou,1 Xueyu Hu,1 Meilin Liu1, *
1 School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0245, United States
Abstract
Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have potential to be one of the most efficient systems for direct conversion of a wide variety of chemical fuels into electricity. 1-3 However, the lack of sulfur- and coking-tolerant anodes still hinders the development of direct hydrocarbon-fueled SOFCs for efficient and cost-effective operation. The conventional Ni-based anodes may suffer from carbon deposition and sulfur poisoning when they are directly exposed to sulfur-containing hydrocarbon fuels, resulting in degradation in performance or even destruction of the anodes. 4-6 In this presentation, we will report a conventional Ni-Zr0.84Y0.16O2-δ (YSZ) anode decorated with Ce and Ba-based catalyst coatings to significantly enhance the sulfur and coking tolerance. Results suggest that the enhanced sulfur tolerance is attributed to the evenly distributed Ce-based catalyst on the inner surface of the porous Ni-YSZ anode while the enhanced coking tolerance is benefited from the Ba-based catalyst layer on the top of the anode. SOFCs with the catalysts-modified Ni-YSZ anodes show minimal degradation when hydrogen with 100 ppm H2S is used as the fuel. More importantly, stable operation is demonstrated for direct utilization of sulfur-containing liquid fuels (e.g., octane and gasoline). This work demonstrates the great potential of catalyst coatings for enhancing contaminant tolerance and durability of SOFC electrodes.
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