Mar 6 2009
Masanobu Awano, Toshio Suzuki and others of the Functional Assembly Technology Group, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), have developed a micro fuel cell module with small-sized tubular solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), in collaboration with NGK Spark Plug Co., Ltd. (NGK). The micro fuel cell module has a size of 1 cm3 with small-size tubular SOFCs of diameters ranging from millimeter to sub-millimeter, and achieves the power density of larger than 2 W/cm3 at 550°C.
Compared to other types of fuel cells, SOFCs offer many advantages such as the highest energy conversion efficiency among all fuel cells, high reliability as they are made solely from solid materials, easy handling, and direct use of hydrocarbon fuel. Previously, however, SOFCs required operation temperatures of 800 - 900°C, and so their application was limited to large-scale stationary power supplies. There have been strong demands for the development of SOFCs operable at lower temperatures to enable their application in small-size portable power supplies.
AIST has been involved in developing cubic micro SOFCs in collaboration with NGK; further, to meet the demand for extremely compact fuel cells, this collaboration has successfully developed the micro fuel cell module by optimizing the module design and ceramic electrode microstructure. As a result, the module requires negligible amount of power for feeding air into the porous solid and allows air supply by natural diffusion; thus, a fuel cell system of significantly improved efficiency and reduced size will be achieved by using the newly developed module. In future, this technology will find wide applications in power supplies for small-size portable electronic devices.
The results of the study will be presented at "nano tech 2009" that will be open on February 18–20, 2009, and at "FC EXPO 2009" that will be open on February 25–27, 2009, both of which will be held at Tokyo Big Sight.