Elaboration and Electrochemical Characterizations of up-Scaled Protonic Ceramic Cells

Protonic Ceramic Cell in fuel cell mode (PCFC) is benefit to produce water at the air electrode side, avoiding the dilution of the fuel. Moreover, co-generation of heat and electricity is possible in this temperature range and ageing and reactivity of materials should be less critical than these observed at higher temperature. Proton Conducting Ceramic Cell is now widely investigated for a variety of applications, in particular fuel cell, steam electrolysis and hydrogen separation but such technology has to face to a low industrial scale maturity.

In the frame of METPROCELL project supported by European Community’s 7^thFramework Programme (FP7/2011-2014) for the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative and coordinated by TECNALIA (SP), up-scaled anode-supported cells (ASC) have been elaborated by wet chemical routes. ASC requires the use of tape-casting method in order to manufacture the support. Then, both electrolyte and cathode are screen-printed on the NiO-electrolyte substrate (cf. Figure 1).

Based on previous works ^[1-3], promising performances (170 mW/cm² at 0.7V, 600°C, cf. Figure 2) and long term testing (thousand hours) have been measured on middle-scaled protonic cells (20 cm²). Microstructure evidenced by SEM analysis and electrochemical performances (IV-curves, Impedance Spectroscopy measurement) as well as durability measurement will be presented and discussed.

[1] Taillades G., Dailly J., Taillades-Jacquin M., Mauvy F., Essouhmi A., Marrony M., Lalanne C., Fourcade S., Jones D.J., Grenier J.-C., Rozière J., “Intermediate temprerature anode-supported fuel cell based on BaCe_0,9Y_0,1O_3-d electrolyte with novel Pr₂NiO₄ cathode”, Fuel Cells (10), 2010, 166

[2] Dailly J., Marrony M., Taillades G., Taillades-Jacquin M., Grimaud A., Mauvy F., Louradour E., Salmi J., “Evaluation of proton conducting BCY10-based anode supported cells by co-pressing method: Up-scaling, performances and durability”, Journal of Power Sources (255), 2014, 302-307

[3] Dailly J., Marrony M., “BCY-based proton conducting ceramic cell: 1000 h of long term testing in fuel cell application”, Journal of Power Sources (240), 2013, 323-327