• Kiviaho, Jari
• Saarinen, Ville
• Janssen, Arno
• Rietveld, Bert

Abstract

Harmonising and eventually standardising fuel celltesting procedures for SOFC cells, stacks and possiblysystems, is essential for comparing and assessing SOFCdevelopment results. The objective of the Europeanproject FCTESqa is to define a set of benchmark testprocedures for evaluation of single cells, stacks andsystems in terms of primarily performance and endurance,and secondarily tolerance for specific contaminants andtransient operating conditions, i.e. thermal and redoxcycling. The project comprises work packages that dealwith test procedures for PEFC, MCFC, SOFC and stationarysystems. It is expected that the European Commission willeventually prescribe these test procedures for evaluatingthe results obtained in fuel cell research anddevelopment projects. The pre-normative proceduresyielded by FCTESqa will furthermore be used forcontributing to the early and market-oriented developmentof official test standards by providing these as input tothe authorised standardisation organisations worldwide.This paper will consider only test procedures for SOFCtechnology, in which case it was decided to focus theactivities on single-cell and short-stack testing. Thefirst tests in the experimental validation of theseprocedures clearly showed the necessity of the adaptationof certain parts of the procedures. Especially therequirement to define a robust set of testing proceduresthat yield test results independent of the test facilityappeared not feasible. The adjusted procedures bettermeet this requirement. Furthermore the current set ofprocedures can easily be applied at low cost by anyorganisation assessing SOFC cell and stack developmentresults.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy