Stack Tests of Metal-Supported Plasma-Sprayed SOFC

Abstract

The development of metal-supported plasma-sprayed SOFC has shown impressive progress in recent years. The main focus of this development was to create a functional stack. Integration of the cell into interconnects has been simplified leading to a lightweight cassette design with a fully integrated cells. Short stacks have been tested for proof of concept with good results at thermal and redox cycling. This shifted the main tasks of the development to scaling up the number of layers and increasing the lifetime of the stacks. In the project MS-SOFC new cassettes using the Plansee ITM alloy have been developed and new plasma spray processes for the electrode layers were introduced. Changes in the manufacturing processes also allowed for the reduction of the number of manufacturing processes for the cassette. Stacks were built up using the new developments. Two 10-layer stacks, one with a vacuum plasma sprayed electrolyte and one with a low pressure plasma sprayed electrolyte, were assembled to evaluate the power density and one 4-layer stack was used for long-term testing. Results of these experiments are presented in this paper.