Investigation of methane steam reforming in planar porous support of solid oxide fuel cell

Adopting the porous support in integrated-planar solid oxide fuel cell (IP-SOFC) can reduce the operating temperature by reducing thickness of electrolyte layer, and also, provide internal reforming environment for hydrogen-rich fuel gas. The distributions of reactant and product components, and temperature of methane steam reforming for IP-SOFC were investigated by the developed physical and mathematical model with thermodynamic analysis, in which eleven possible reaction mechanisms were considered by the source terms and Arrhenius relationship. Numerical simulation of the model revealed that the progress of reforming reaction and the distribution of the product, H2, were influenced by the operating conditions, included that of temperature, ratio of H2O and CH4, as well as by the porosity of the supporting material. The simulating results indicate that the methane conversion rate can reach its maximum value under the operating temperature of 800 °C and porosity of ε = 0.4, which rather approximate to the practical operating conditions of IP-SOFC. In addition, characteristics of carbon deposition on surface of catalyst were discussed under various operating conditions and configuration parameters of the porous support. The present works provided some theoretical explanations to the numerous experimental observations and engineered practices.