One-click startup operation of a micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells using propane/air/steam

The design and performance of a tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) integrated with a one-click startup thermal self-sustaining reformer is presented, allowing the tubular SOFC to operate without any external heat source by using propane/air/steam. Double conductive Ni-pads (DCNPs) are utilized as anode current collector in μT-SOFC. The reformer consists of a combustion chamber for initial heating and a reforming chamber for syngas production for the SOFC. The thermal energy generated by complete propane combustion is adequate to achieve thermally self-sustaining operation and efficiently raise the cell temperature above 700 °C. Operating at 700 °C with pure H2, a cell with a length of 12 cm achieves a maximum power density of 138 mW cm−2, which decreases by 13 %–120 mW cm−2 when using syngas produced by steam-propane reforming. The syngas composition from steam-propane reforming reaches 7.6 % CO and 61.7 % H2. COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to simulate the multi-physical field of a single cell exposed to various syngas compositions, showing that syngas produced by steam-propane reforming exhibits excellent electrochemical performance in tubular SOFCs compared to catalyst partial oxidation (CPOX).