Studies on operation parameters of SOFC-compressor combine system

Previous work showed that pressurization has positive effect on the output power of SOFC. However, the compressor used to enhance the fuel cell operation pressure consumes electricity. The parasitic power cannot be ignored when calculating the net output power. In this paper, the influence of pressurization on the SOFC-compressor combine system was presented. The comprehensive SOFC steady-state model takes the effects of operation parameters and the microstructure of the fuel cell into consideration, based on which, the output performance of the fuel cell is evaluated. The fuel cell voltage-current steady-state relationship is proved that the model is accurate in predicting the SOFC performance under different pressures. The power consumption of the compressor is also obtained by fundamental thermodynamic principles. From the simulation results obtained by MATLAB, the relations between pressure and cell/system output power are observed and analyzed, which shows an optimization problem between the efficiency and the output power.