Enhancing the power output of direct carbon solid oxide fuel cell by using Ba-loaded activated carbon fuel

The performance of direct carbon solid oxide fuel cells (DC-SOFCs) is limited by the slow carbon gasification kinetics at operating temperatures. To address this limitation, a carbon fuel loaded with Ba catalyst is developed for DC-SOFCs to improve the electrochemical performance in this study. Ba is loaded on activated carbon in the form of BaCO3 by the wet agglomeration technique. The effect of the Ba catalyst with various contents on the electrochemical performance in single cells and fuel utilization of DC-SOFCs are examined. Experimental results show that the optimized Ba content is 5 wt% and the DC-SOFC with this Ba-loaded activated carbon fuel gives the best output with a maximum power density of 328.4 mW cm(-2) at 850 degrees C. Furthermore, the DC-SOFC fueled by 5 wt% Ba-loaded activated carbon operates steadily for 28.76 h with the fuel utilization of 16.0%, which is also superior to many other cells. The enhancement of cell performance suggests that Ba is an effective catalyst to the Boudouard reaction, and the catalytic mechanism is also discussed in detail.