Worldwide SOFC technology overview and benchmark

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) are generally considered a promising future electricity generation technology due to their high electrical efficiency. They also display a multi-fuel capability (hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methane etc.), may play a role in carbon sequestration strategies and render the highest electricity generation efficiency in power station design if coupled with a gas turbine. Still, their development is faced with various problems of high temperature materials, design of cost effective materials and manufacturing processes and efficient plant design. This paper will summarize the world wide efforts in the field of SOFC, presenting an overview of the main existing SOFC designs and the main developers active in this field. Based on data published in proceedings of international conferences during the last years, a comparison is made of the results achieved in cell, stack and system development.