Investigating the Effect of Natural Gas Composition on Performance of Solid-Oxide Fuel-Cell with Internal Reforming

In this study will study the fuel gases composition effect on tubular solid oxide fuel cell with direct internal reforming and an electrochemical model. The natural gas of five regions of Iran containing different chemical compositions has been used. The fuel cell computations have been done separately and in three sections including reforming, electrochemical and thermal computations. The results show that the quality and percentage of fuel components have considerable effect on fuel cell performance. It’s observed that in low operating temperatures, the gas containing high percentage of methane has the best efficiency and in the intermediate temperatures, the rate-alteration of methane has not significant effect on cell efficiency and in high temperatures, the gas with low percentages of methane has the best efficiency. Also in a special temperature and in a low operating pressure (about 1bar), the rate variation of methane has no effect on the efficiency. The fuel cell performance decreases for the gas containing high percentage of methane in the intermediate operating pressure (about 2bars), but it improves for other gases and in high operating pressure (about 5bars) the cell performance falls for all fuels. It will have the best performance for the gas containing high methane rate.