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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The effect of heavy tar compounds on the performance of a Ni-YSZ anode supported solid oxide fuel cell
Received 7 March 2016 was investigated. Both toluene and naphthalene were chosen as model compounds and tested separately
Received in revised form with a simulated bio-syngas. Notably, the effect of naphthalene is almost negligible with pure H2 feed to
1 July 2016
the SOFC, whereas a severe degradation is observed when using a bio-syngas with an H2:CO 1. The tar
Accepted 15 July 2016
compound showed to have a remarkable effect on the inhibition of the WGS shift-reaction, possibly also
on the CO direct electro-oxidation at the three-phase-boundary. An interaction through adsorption of
naphthalene on nickel catalytic and electrocatalytic active sites is a plausible explanation for observed
Keywords:
Bio-syngas
degradation and strong performance loss. Different sites seem to be involved for H2 and CO electro-
SOFC oxidation and also with regard to catalytic water gas shift reaction. Finally, heavy tars (C 10) must
Tar compounds be regarded as a poison more than a fuel for SOFC applications, contrarily to lighter compounds such
Electro-chemical performance benzene or toluene that can directly reformed within the anode electrode. The presence of naphthalene
Naphthalene strongly increases the risk of anode re-oxidation in a syngas stream as CO conversion to H2 is inhibited
Toluene and also CH4 conversion is blocked.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.07.029
0960-1481/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
748 D. Papurello et al. / Renewable Energy 99 (2016) 747e753
of heavy-tars in the anode feed stream. A commercial anode- slight improvement is recorded for the H2 C10H8 case. However,
supported cell (SOLIDpower Spa, Italy) was used for all experi- the shape of circles observed is essentially the same, underlying
ments. The cells consist of a Ni-YSZ anode support of ~240 mm, an that no interaction of tar with electrochemical performance were
anode active layer, a YSZ dense electrolyte and a LSCF cathode. The observed with H2 fuel only at such low tar concentrations in the
cells consisted of a disk of 50 mm of anode diameter which were feeding fuel. In fact, the ASR value is 0.52 Ucm2 with pure H2 and
tested in oven conguration with seal-less ceramic housings. A 0.49 Ucm2 adding 25 ppm(v) of C10H8. This is also in agreement to
detailed description of the experimental apparatus can be found what found in Ref. [8]. The response was completely different when
elsewhere [14]. The operating temperature was 740e750 C: the feeding the cell with the syngas mixture, humidied at 14%, with a
cell temperature was measured through a thermocouple (TC) varying amount of naphthalene up to 10 ppm(v). As the naphtha-
placed at the center of the cell on the anode side. In this way, the lene concentration gets higher, a sudden voltage drop is observed
monitored TC signal is quite representative of variation occurring followed by stable voltage operation up to ~5 ppm(v). For con-
on the anode electrode due to chemical reactions (e.g., endothermic centrations above 5 ppm(v), both initial voltage drop and subse-
steam-reforming, slightly exothermic water-gas shift, etc.). The quent performance degradation becomes steep. At 10 ppm(v), the
volumetric dry syngas composition used for all experiments is H2/ voltage drop is such to reverse the potential of the fuel cell indi-
CO/CH4/CO2/H2O/N2 19/17/2/8/7/47, yielding an H2/CO ratio quite cating a strong re-oxidation occurring on the Ni-anode. In Fig. 3 the
close to 1. The fuel utilization was set to 15e21% instead of usual FU portion of experiment when naphthalene is added to the synthetic
values, above 60%. This is due to the limitations of our experimental syngas stream is enlarged, showing well how the cell temperature
rig. In fact the ceramic housing is seal-les and to prevent the lack of results reduced by almost 20 C while switching from tar-free
fuel and to avoid the entry of air in the borders lower FU values are syngas to a maximum concentration of C10H8 of about 10 ppm(v).
adopted. A (molar) steam-to-carbon of 0.4 (related to amount of Naphthalene is recognized to slow/inhibit steam-reforming ki-
carbon contained in C-fuels, i.e., CO and CH4) was set to prevent netics of methane fuel. However it is not clear its effect on water-
carbon deposition while avoiding an excessive amount of steam gas shift reactions considering that a potential is also applied to
that could lead to enhanced Ni degradation. On another test bench, the electrode. Considering that the syngas contains both CH4 (2%
the catalytic conversion study of a gas mixture with tars was carried vol.) and CO (15%vol.), the involved chemical reactions within the
out with a concentration of C10H8 on nickel anode half-cell. The Ni-YSZ anode electrode are:
reactor was placed into a furnace whose operative temperature was
leaded by a controller driven (Horst Gmbh, Germany) by a Ketype CH4 H2 O!3H2 CO; DH 0 206kJ=mol steam
thermocouple placed in a thermo well cantered in the catalyst bed.
reforming SR (1)
Two additional thermocouples (Ketype) were located at the inlet
and outlet of the catalytic bed to measure temperature of inlet and
outlet gas ows (Tersid, Milano Italy). The heating apparatus was CO H2 O!H2 CO2 ; DH0 41kJ=mol water
calibrated in such a way that all temperature measuring points had gas shift WGS (2)
the same constant temperature. An alumina xed-bed reactor
(Fint. 14 mm; hbed 180 mm) with a previously reduced The temperature drop in Fig. 3 when inserting C10H8 in the
anode electrolyte cell was heated up to 700 C in a ceramic anode syngas stream is consistent with a strong inhibition of the
electric furnace. The reactor was fed by two different inlet streams: WGS reactions (Eq. (2)) rather SR suppression, that would have
caused an opposite temperature behavior. The regular oscillation
H2/CO2 (50/50%vol.) mixture with 25 ppm(v) of C10H8, observed in the temperature prole is noise from the electronic
The syngas mixture with a steam to carbon ratio xed at 0.4 instrumentation used for data acquisition.
with 10 ppm(v) of pollutant (concentration selected as the In order to further understand the impact of naphthalene on the
maximum value possible depending on the H2 molar concen- WGS reaction, and thus to analyse what stated before, polarization
tration adopted). experiments were run using anode fuel compositions without
methane (Fig. 4). In this way, the only relevant chemical reaction
According to Guerra et al. (2014), we selected the fuel ow and occurring on the Ni-anode is the WGS reaction (or its reverse).
the nickel anode amount: the nickel anode half-cell reduced was Being the naphthalene concentration always around few ppm(v)s,
about 0.55 g [20]. An HPR-20 mass spectrometer (Hiden ltd, UK) has the tar in the anode feed is always considered as a fuel impurity
been adopted to monitor the furnace outlet gas concentration. rather than a fuel able to provide a meaningful amount of elec-
tricity. However, the fate of naphthalene remains unclear and
3. Results should be further investigated with gas analysis of the anode outlet.
Polarization results show and conrm that the impact of heavy tar
3.1. Naphthalene effect on SOFC performance (naphthalene in our study) does not affect signicantly the fuel cell
performance under H2 fuel only. Performance are only slightly
The effect of Naphthalene was rst check against an anode feed reduced with naphthalene at higher current density, not neces-
containing H2-fuel only, humidied at 6.1%. The fuel cell perfor- sarily meaning an effect of the tar. The performance is within the
mance was not affected by the presence of a varying amount of variability observed among repetition of the i-V trace under same
C10H8 up to 50 ppm(v) under an operating temperature of 750 C operating and fuel conditions.
and a current density of 0.33 A/cm2 (Fig. 1). In Fig. 2 the EIS were The performance with H2/CO 70/30%vol. in absence of any steam
measured during the galvanostatic experiment shown in Fig. 1 was instead producing quite different results depending on the
(portion of the graph on the left, where H2 fuel is used). Essen- presence of tar. In fact, naphthalene strongly reduced the cell per-
tially the impedance response was observed with/without the tar. formance. Most notably, already the OCV is reduced, when
Actually, a slightly shift on the left (meaning lower overall polari- switching from a clean H2/CO feed to one with tar showing that,
zation) was observed when feeding naphthalene as a result of an even at open circuit WGS is inhibited thus reducing the H2 partial
activation process still occurring. Adding at the hydrogen stream, pressure at anode electrode. The performance with CH4 and H2 plus
naphthalene the test improves due to the more fuel adopted that is steam with and without the pollutant impact of naphthalene are
reformed on the cell. Considering the intercept with the real axis a reported in Fig. 4. A strong degradation is reported especially
750 D. Papurello et al. / Renewable Energy 99 (2016) 747e753
Fig. 1. The effect of naphthalene (C10H8) on the ASC performance when feeding an H2eH2O only fuel and bio-syngas.
Fig. 3. The effect of naphthalene (C10H8) on ASC performance when feeding syngas. The temperature behavior is also plotted.
Fig. 4. Polarization curves with/without the presence of naphthalene under different anode fuel compositions (pure H2, H2/CO 70/30, H2/CO 50/50 and H2/CH4).
from the syngas mixture the ohmic contribution remains stable, H2/CO2 50/50%vol. inlet mixture at 700 C with and without
while Rp2 change. naphthalene.
In accordance with results achieved on electrochemical tests,
3.3. Naphthalene catalytic study on nickel anode compartment the catalytic study showed how 25 ppm(v) of C10H8 decrease the CO
and water concentration content in the reactor outlet. This
The anode nickel based fuel cell have been fed with H2/CO2 and demonstrate how naphthalene strongly reduces the cell perfor-
syngas mixtures at 700 C in a catalytic reactor (without electro- mance via the RWGS inhibition: reaction (3) consumes H2 and CO2
chemical reactions). The goal of this section is to verify the difculty to produce additional CO at clean conditions, while considering the
to complete the reverse water gas shift reaction (RWGS) (eq. (3)) case with naphthalene (10 ppm(v)) the CO and H2O concentration
using naphthalene as tar model in the gas mixture. decreases whereas increase the concentration of hydrogen.
The decreasing rate of CO and H2O is more pronounced in the
CO2 H2 !H2 O CO; DH0 41kJ=mol reverse water syngas case where a direct internal reforming has to be performed
gas shift RWGS (3) on nickel active sites, see Fig. 8. These results are in accordance with
those achieved during the electrochemical tests. The RWGS reac-
Fig. 7 shows the gas concentration at the reactor outlet in case of tion is thus inhibited increasing the H2 partial pressure at the anode
752 D. Papurello et al. / Renewable Energy 99 (2016) 747e753
Fig. 6. EIS with clean syngas and syngas 3.8 and 24 ppm(v) of toluene (current electrode (see Fig. 9).
density 0.33 A/cm2, temperature 750 C).
4. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Fig. 7. EIS contribution for clean syngas and syngas 3.8 and 24 ppm(v) of toluene
(current density 0.33 A/cm2, temperature 750 C). The research leading to these results has received funding from
the Italian Minister for Education (MIUR) under the national project
PRIN-2009 Analisi sperimentale ed energetico/strategica
D. Papurello et al. / Renewable Energy 99 (2016) 747e753 753
dell'utilizzo di syngas da carbone e biomassa per l'alimentazione di Performance of a solid oxide fuel cell short-stack with biogas feeding, Appl.
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