SOFC 5 kW e CHP Field Unit: Effect of the Methane Dilution

TurboCare and Politecnico di Torino (Italy) have installed an SOFC laboratory in order to analyse the operation of two SOFC generators (Project EOS‐100 kW and EBE‐5 kW) built by Siemens Power Corporation (SPC). In the EBE project the installation of the SFC5 SOFC generator (3.5 kW e and 3 kW th ) was carried out. To date, it has operated in the workshop canteen for more than 15,984 h with very high reliability. The real stack is a complex system not installed in a laboratory environment, and has several effects of non‐homogeneity in terms of electrochemical response to fuel or air management modifications. Moreover, many of the parameters of the stack are not directly measurable, and have to be inferred by indirect measurements. In this paper, the analysis of the non‐homogeneous behaviour of the different segments of the complete stack is performed, through an experimental session using a non‐conventional fuel. The obtained data have been analysed using the ANOVA for every dependent variable and a non‐linear regression model for the voltage. Those models were used to evaluate the effect of the fuel modification on the local fuel utilisation in different sectors of the stack.