Recent Developments of SOFCs and News from IEA Annexes 32 and 37Bengt Sundén and Martin AnderssonLund University, Department of Energy Sciences

Contents

• IEA Annex 32 (SOFC)

• Examples from Japan, Germany and USA

• Summary of recent SOFC developments

• IEA Annex 37 (Modelling)

• Attended conferences

IEA Annex 32 (SOFC)

The aim is the continuation and intensification of the open information exchange to accelerate the development of SOFC towards commercialization.

• Members: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and USA

• Yearly meetings in connection with international fuel cell conferences

• Providing a good overview of the state-of-the-art of development and commercialization activities

• Networking

Japan – ENE-FARM (700 W) - status 2017

blue = SOFC

Japan – going from 700 W to 3 kW - status 2017

Japan – ENE-FARM (700 W) - status 2017

METI’s(MinistryofEconomy,TradeandIndustry)policyin2017Objectives:TosubsidyENE-FARMaswellasFCsforbusiness/industrialuse.

Targets:

1)ENE-FARM1,400,000units2020

PEFC(700W)800,000yenin2019;SOFC(700W)1,000,000yenin2021

2)Business/Industrialuse

Systemcost500,00yen/kWin2022

Subsidy1) ENE-FARMfixedamount2) Business/industrialwithinonethird

Japan – Going up in size -status 2017

Germany Industrial activity at all scales- status 2017

Germany – Lifetime test at FZJ

• Lifetimes over 10 years reached (still running with 85 000 hworking time) for stack in laboratory environment (FZ Jülich).

• 10 years “old technology” [even longer lifetime with technology of today expected]

• No “new” similar long-time tests being started at FZJ

Courtesy of FZJ

US DOEs view on cost 2017

US DOEs view on cost development 2017

US DOE funded research partners

"2017 partners” - currently 30 MUSD/year of federal funding

USA – Bloom Energy (200 kW system)

Systems being sold in 2017

= Outcome of Annex 32

Presents SOFC companies working at stack and system scale (avalible online at no cost)

Summary of recent SOFC developments• Lifetimes over 10 years reached for stack in laboratory

environment (FZ Jülich).• The electrical efficiency is over 60% for a 1.5 kW SOFC CHP

system that is available for purchase (SolidPower)• A 200 kW SOFC system under development by SOFCMAN in

China reached 72.5 % (LHV) electrical efficiency. • The number of companies developing fuel cell systems based on

multiple technologies is increasing. • In public funded programs (e.g., Callux in Germany and the ENE-

FARM in Japan) multiple fuel cell technologies are being installed. • Large-scale SOFC installations, provided by Bloom Energy in the

USA, have achieved significant deployment in USA.

Annex 37 (FC modeling)The modeling annex aims at developing, maintaining, and applying a suite(s) of open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software for application to FCs, electrolyzers and other electrochemical applications (hydrogen storage, batteries, etc.) including validation and verification by comparison with other CFD codes, physical experiments and development of benchmark problems.

Challenges: No joint research funding, i.e., all participants have different aims and priorities, but annex 37 is very good for networking, research discussions, state-of-the-art information exchange.

Annex 37 (FC modeling)Chaired by: FZ Jülich (Germany)

Members: Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States, South Korea and Sweden.

Outcome 1: State-of-the-art review paper to be published 2018 in Progress in Energy and Combustion Science

Outcome 2: Book on Open Source Modeling to be published in 2019 (outcome of a workshop in Jülich, 2017)

Attended Conferences 2016-2017

• ASME IMECE November 2017– CFD modeling PEMFC mostly on flow distribution and innovative

channel design on BPP

• SOFC-XV (ECS), USA, July 2017– SOFC integrated in data centers in each rack, presentation from

Microsoft, possible with 1000 * 10 kW systems in each data center.

• PRIME (ECS), USA, October 2016– Japan is significantly aiming to show the world its hydrogen and fuel

cell status during the Olympic Games in 2020

– Many presentations from US military

– Natural-gas is then fed directly into each rack.

Thanks for your attentionQuestions and comments