Analysis of the Effect of Anode Porosity on Temperature Distribution on Planar Radial Type SOFC

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is an electrochemical equipment that converts gas into electricity directly. The waste products resulting from SOFC are water vapor and heat when using hydrogen gas. The electrode of the SOFC is the anode, electrolyte and cathode. The performance of SOFC is influenced porosity of the electrode. This study explained the relationship between porosity of the anode and temperature distribution using computational fluid dynamics modeling approach (CFD). In this study, CFD modeling was done by using Fluent software. The geometry model of computational modeling is a planar radial-type SOFC. The assumptions of some boundary conditions used from the study of literature and the object of study. The standard deviation and the different of temperature of the anode-electrolyte surface used to analyse the result. Non-homogenous temperature distribution rise if the anode porosity and gas flow rate is increasing. This indicates the gradient of temperature is bigger in the higher porosity, which may cause thermal stress and degrades the materials of electrode.