Numerical Simulation And Performance Analysis For Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

The fuel cell is an important development project of clean energy, it is a device that converts chemical energy into electricity from the reaction of fuel and oxidant.. Solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC) is operated at high temperature, it has advangages of solid structure,large range of fuels,high power density,higher utilization of waste heat and so on. Planer and tubular geometries are the two polular designs for SOFC, planer type SOFC is more promising. Since the SOFC is operated at the temparatures as high as 1000℃and its structure is complexity, it is difficult to measure the distributions of current density, temperatures of solids and gases, and gas composition. Computational modeling can be used to investigate the characteristics for the SOFC at various operating conditions and it is an effective tool for optimization of SOFC and predicting their characteristics at the steady and transient operatingstates.In this paper, the working principles of solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC) is analyzed under the consideratrion of electrode polarization and ohm polarization. A three-dimensional numerical model that using hydrogen as fuel is developed to investigate the fluid flow, heat transfer, species transport in the planer SOFC. The model simultaneously accounts for electrochemical kinectics, fluid dynamics, and heat and mass transport. The steady-state model is computed with a commercial CFD package FLUENT. The effects of cell structure parameters on the performance of SOFC are analyzed by the computational results; The distribution of flow field,species concentration,temperature field,current and polarization voltage are analyzed in the electrode supproted SOFC; The effects of different support types on the performance of SOFC are analyzed in detail.