Carbon formation in solid oxide fuel cells during internal reforming and anode off-gas recirculation

This aim of this work is to determine carbon formation when methane is reformed directly inside the SOFC anodes, from thermodynamic equilibrium and kinetic approaches. Two carbon formation determination approaches - carbon-steam equilibrium and carbon activity approaches were then presented, compared and discussed. The consideration of the reversed syngas formation reaction is important to the carbon activity approach, which is expected to be a useful tool for determining carbon formation in the anode recirculation system. The investigation of the combined steam and dry methane reforming, both thermodynamic equilibrium computational modelling approach and kinetic experimental validation were presented in this work. Different ratios among methane, steam and carbon dioxide, leading to different oxygen to carbon atomic were used to examine the methane reforming and the carbon formation prevention abilities. Finally, a kinetic modelling for a methane fed SOFC with anode recirculation system was built based on the integration of different functions for a more detailed investigation. The combination of different fuel current densities (i.e.0.5, 1.0 and 1.4), steam to methane ratios (i.e. 0.25-4.0) in the fuel and different recycling rate (i.e.10%-90%) were given to the model to investigate the effects of fuel conditions on the system operation