Model of Cathode Reaction Resistance in Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells

Abstract

A model of the performance of a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) is required to estimate the efficiency of an MCFC power plant or to simulate the internal state of a stack. The model should provide an accurate representation of the performance under various operating conditions. However, the performance estimated by previous models has been found to deviate from the measured performance under low oxygen and carbon dioxide cathode partial pressures. To solve this problem, we carried out a systematic analysis of the performance of several bench‐scale cells operated under various cathode gas conditions and investigated a model of cathode polarization according to the oxygen reduction mechanism in molten carbonate. As a result, it has been clarified that the behavior of cathode polarization under various conditions is described well by the dependence of mixed diffusion of superoxide ion and in the melt on the assumed partial pressures at each total operating pressure.