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Fuel-cell design boosts efficiency

A new design for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) may lead to simpler yet more efficient versions of the power generators. One of the goals of fuel-cell research is to increase the overall efficiency by taking advantage of the heat generated by fuel cells to convert (reform) hydrocarbons to hydrogen. The idea is to make hydrogen directly at the fuel cell from readily available materials such as gasoline and diesel fuel. Researchers have had little success with the design, because hydrocarbon reforming typically causes a debilitating layer of coke to accumulate on the Ni-based anodes commonly used in SOFCs. Now Authors have shown that coke buildup can be avoided by combining a thin, porous catalyst layer consisting of ruthenium-ceria with a conventional anode. The team reports that in test runs using isooctane-air mixtures, the newly designed SOFCs provide stable power densities.




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