Effect of ethene impurity on performance of solid oxide fuel cell

A pre-reforming unit is needed if liquid hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline or diesel, are used in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems. Although pre-reforming removes most of the higher hydrocarbons, there may still be some fractions left in the reformate flow. Ethene was chosen to be the subject of this work because it has been analyzed to be the most significant impurity in diesel reformate. In this work, an anode supported unit cell was used to examine the behavior and performance of a SOFC when ethene was added to hydrogen feed. The ethene concentration in the feed was increased stepwise from 0 ppm to 1000 ppm and the current was kept constant for 100 hours at each concentration level. Changes in the cell performance were monitored by impedance spectroscopy and polarization measurements. It was detected that ethene does not accelerate cell degradation