Development of high-performance solid oxide fuel cell stack with low degradation rate and fault tolerance for commercial applications

This project, led by the University of Alberta and Cummins Inc. develops the first demonstration-scale 0.5 kW solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack as a combined heat and power (CHP) unit for residential applications in Canada. Such CHPs at the scale of 5 kW are meant to deliver clean heat and electricity to Canadian households. Currently, the power degradation rate of commercial 1 to 5-kW SOFC stacks is about 1% per 1000 hours, exceeding the required 0.2% degradation rate to make SOFCs a commercially viable technology. The objective of this project is to reduce the power degradation rate of the demo scale CHP to below 0.2% per 1000h and increase its fuel conversion efficiency to higher than 90%. This target will be achieved by developing large planar fuel cells using novel cathode materials developed at UAlberta, optimizing the stack design using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and controlling the operation of the stack using innovative artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.