Impact of Sweep Gas on the Degradation of an La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.8 Fe 0.8 O 3 Anode in a Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell

Michał Wierzbicki, Stanisław Jagielski, Yevgeniy Naumovich (), Anna Niemczyk, Marek Skrzypkiewicz and Jakub Kupecki
Additional contact information
Michał Wierzbicki: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland
Stanisław Jagielski: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland
Yevgeniy Naumovich: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland
Anna Niemczyk: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland
Marek Skrzypkiewicz: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland
Jakub Kupecki: Center for Hydrogen Technologies (CTH2), Institute of Power Engineering—National Research Institute, Augustowka 36, 02-981 Warsaw, Poland

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 5, 1-16

Abstract: The degradation of solid oxide electrolysis (SOE) cells with different anode sweep gases was studied in 1000 h-long measurements in order to investigate the impact of sweep gas composition on cell performance. Cathode-supported electrolysis cells with an La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3 air electrode (active area of 4 × 4 cm 2 ) were tested under a constant current (−0.25 A/cm 2 ) in the electrolysis mode while supplying the cathode side with 70% H 2 O–30% H 2 mixtures at 800 °C and using oxygen, nitrogen, and steam as sweep gases. It was demonstrated that the degradation of the anode in steam conditions resulted in more than a 2-fold increase in both, polarization and ohmic resistance (from 0.20–0.25 to 0.6–0.65 Ω cm 2 compared to relatively stable values of 0.15–0.2 Ω cm 2 for N 2 ), as a consequence of the phase decomposition. Strontium played an important role in steam-induced degradation, migrating from the volume of the electrode layer to the surface of the electrolyte. As a result, the Sr-enriched layer demonstrated susceptibility to Cr poisoning. The cell purged with N 2 demonstrated enhanced performance, while the use of oxygen led to degradation originating from the well-described delamination process. DRT analysis demonstrated some similarity of the spectra for steam and N 2 , namely the presence of a slow process at τ ≈ 0.5 s, which might be associated with hindered oxygen transport due to point defect association in the perovskite structure. The results of this study showed that Sr-containing materials likely cannot be used as an SOE anode in high humidity conditions.

Keywords: solid oxide electrolysis cell; anode; degradation; DRT; steam electrolysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/5/1144/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/5/1144/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:5:p:1144-:d:1347612

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().