Researchers determine key improvement for (SOFC) fuel cells
https://news.wsu.edu/2016/07/18/researchers-determine-key-improvement-fuel-cells/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Researchers determine key improvement for fuel cells[/font]
July 18, 2016
By Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering & Architecture
[font size=3]PULLMAN, Wash. Washington State University researchers have determined a key step in improving solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), a promising clean energy technology that has struggled to gain wide acceptance in the marketplace.
The researchers determined a way to improve one of the primary failure points for the fuel cell, overcoming key issues that have hindered its acceptance. Their work is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Journal of Physical Chemistry C (
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b01292).
An SOFC is made of solid materials, and the electricity is created by oxygen ions traveling through the fuel cell. Unlike other types of fuel cells, SOFCs dont require the use of expensive metals, like platinum, and can work with a large variety of fuels, such as gasoline or diesel fuel.
The researchers determined that the presence of an electric field at this boundary can prevent failures and improve the systems performance. To properly capture the complexity of this interface, they used the Center for Nanoscale Materials supercomputer at the Argonne National Laboratory to perform computations.
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