Analytical modeling of polarizations in a solid oxide fuel cell using biomass syngas product as fuel

An analytical model is developed to study fuel type effect on polarizations and performance of SOFC. We consider especially two types of fuel: pure hydrogen and syngas (mixture of H2 and CO) produced by biomass gasification. The proposed model is based on simultaneous direct oxidation of H2 and CO at the anode side and uses the dusty-gas model with appropriate diffusion coefficient (binary or mixture coefficient in porous material) to evaluate the concentration polarization and the Butler–Volmer equation to calculate the activation polarization when ohmic polarization is expressed by the well known Ohm’s law. Results analysis show that a fraction of CO of about 24% in syngas improves the performance of SOFC by 23% compared to that obtained by pure H2.