Flame assisted vapour deposition of cathode for solid oxide fuel cells. 2. Modelling of processing parameters

Flame assisted vapour deposition (FAVD) has been used to deposit porous lanthanum strontium manganese oxide (LSM) films for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) cathodes. The variation of microstructure of the deposited films with the processing parameters has been described in Part 1 of this paper. In parallel with the experiments, complementary modelling work of the turbulent flame was carried out using the finite volume CFD package FLUENT*. This was the first attempt in FAVD process modelling. The effects of varying experimental parameters such as the ratio of alcohol to water and the concentration of the precursor solution, have been investigated. The temperature distributions obtained from the modelling are consistent with the experimental results. The highest combustion temperature predicted from the model indicates the complete combustion process which yields powdery film in Part 1. Hence, the results in this paper confirm the trends for the experimental work.