The Effect of Mass Flow Distribution on the Characteristics of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System

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Abstract
In a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack the fuel and the air have to be uniformly distributed to a system of parallel channels. This is a difficult task, particularly when the total pressure loss of the stack should be kept as low as possible. In this paper a simulation program is described treating the problem of branching channels with a particular view to fast convergence for application as a subroutine to the main SOFC code. The simulation is experimentally verified and then applied to a planar SOFC cell and stack as well. The calculations show that a mass flow variation by a factor of 3 to 4 occurs along the stack. The effect on the integral operation quantities, i.e. cell voltage and performance is smaller than 1%, the local temperatures, however, increase by 20 K. Additional results of a sensitivity study are presented, particularly the effect of the manifold size on the mass-flow distribution.

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