Advanced SOFC Technologies for Low carbon, energy Efficient and Affordable Power

Strathclyde's contribution to this large consortium project was to carry out research and to develop techniques to measure the concentrations of specific gases (mainly methane and water vapour) inside various active regions of solid oxide fuel cells at temperatures of over 800C and pressures up to 8 atmospheres. For some aspects of the work the gases needed to be measured in situ and for others gases were extracted but were still at high temperature and pressure. Tunable diode laser spectroscopy with light delivery to the point of measurement using optical fibres was chosen as the preferred approach.

Strathclyde's contribution to this large consortium project was to carry out research and to develop techniques to measure the concentrations of specific gases (mainly methane and water vapour) inside various active regions of solid oxide fuel cells at temperatures of over 800C and pressures up to 8 atmospheres. For some aspects of the work the gases needed to be measured in situ and for others gases were extracted but were still at high temperature and pressure. Tunable diode laser spectroscopy with light delivery to the point of measurement using optical fibres was chosen as the preferred approach.

Techniques to measure the concentrations of specific gases (mainly methane and water vapour) extracted from various active regions of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) at temperatures of over 800C and pressures up to 8 atmospheres were successfully realised and tested in situ. Spectroscopic analytical tools, hardware, software and measurement procedures were researched, developed and validated for this purpose during the course of the programme. Indeed Rolls-Royce Fuel Cells Systems (RRFCS) stated that these are the only viable techniques to make such measurements in future commercial products. Indeed, RRFCS, with our assistance are still using these approaches in their research and development programmes and are intending to develop the techniques further to become suitable for commercial product. Strathclyde is continuing to assist them in moving towards that.



Some of the key findings were published as follows: M Lengden, R Cunningham and W. Johnstone, “Tuneable diode laser gas analyser for methane measurements on a large scale solid oxide fuel cell” Journal of Power Sources, 196, 20, pp8406-08 2011 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2011.06.020.



In addition further work has beed submitted recently for publication in Journal of Lightwave Technology.