Integration of oxide anodes into the Rolls-Royce IP-SOFC concept

The limitations of the current state of the art Ni-YSZ cermet anodes with respect to Redox stability, coking and sulphur tolerance are well acknowledged. A material which mitigates all or even some of these issues would be of great importence for the continued development of robust SOFC systems. One such promising material system is based around the perovskite (La,Sr)Cr _0.5Mn_0.5O₃ (LSCM). In this paper, some aspects of the work, carried out to integrate LSCM anodes into the IP-SOFC, are described. The intricacies of the introduction of a new material into an existing stack design concept are considered and how this impacts the performance and requirements of adjacent materials. In the case of the LSCM integration, at least as much work has gone into the development of these layers as into the anode itself. In particular, the design of a current collector to optimise both the conductivity across the layers and the adhesion to the anode has proved to be a challenging task within the normal design constraints of the IP-SOFC. Initial perfomance of around 75 mW cm^-2 in a stack repeat unit test is encouraging and initial analysis has suggested that further development of the current collecting microstructure will confer significant performance improvements.