Modeling the Performance of Flattened Tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a computational model to predict the electrical performance of the flattened tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) designed by Siemens Westinghouse Corporation. This design is an improvement over the conventional cylindrical SOFC and allows higher power densities. We modeled the current transport in a cross section of the cell for a given cell operating voltage and local Nernst voltage. We solved the resulting system of simultaneous nonlinear equations using n-dimensional Newton-Raphson algorithm. The output gives the current density distribution and also the total current at the cross section, which is used to obtain the total cell current (and power) for the given voltage. The results of the model are in good agreement with the experimental performance reported in literature.