The numerical investigation of a planar single chamber solid oxide fuel cell performance with a focus on the support types

Single chamber solid oxide fuel cells (SC-SOFCs) could be an alternative to the conventional dual chamber types since they do not need any sealant and electrolyte crack growth does not lead to failure in performance. However, the reduced reactant activity due to spectator species present at anode and cathode results in a significantly decreased performance. The focus of this paper is to present a comparative study on the performance of single-chamber anode-, cathode, and electrolyte-supported cells. Our results show that anode-supported cells offer significantly better performance compared to electrolyte-supported cells. The cathode-supported cells show a similar performance to anode-supported cell close to open circuit voltages, i.e. voltages above 0.92 V, after which the cell current density decreases due to lack of oxygen at the cathode catalyst layer. Finally, a time-dependent performance study of the cathode-supported cell concept is presented and discussed.