High performance of direct methane-fuelled solid oxide fuel cell with samarium modified nickel-based anode

Natural gas is one of the most attractive fuels for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), while the anode activity for methane fuel has a great influence on the performance and stability of SOFC. Samarium is a good catalyst promoter for methane reforming. In this work, samarium is used to modify nickel catalyst, which results in small nickel oxide particles. The SmNi-YSZ (yttria-stabilized zirconia) anode has smaller particles and better interfacial contact between nickel and YSZ compared with conventional Ni-YSZ anode. The fine structure of SmNi-YSZ anode results in high activity for electrochemical oxidation of hydrogen and low polarization resistance of the cell. The performance of SmNi-YSZ anode cell with humidified methane as fuel is greatly improved, which is similar to that with hydrogen as fuel. The maximum power densities of SmNi-YSZ anode cell are 1.56 W cm−2 for humidified hydrogen fuel and 1.54 W cm−2 for humidified methane fuel at 800 °C. The maximum power density is increased by 221% when samarium is used to modify Ni-YSZ anode for humidified methane fuel at 650 °C. High cell performance results in good stability of SmNi-YSZ anode cell and the cell runs stably for more than 600 min for humidified methane fuel.