Impurity Poisoning of SOFCs

Long-term durability is one of the most important technological issues for SOFC system development. Life time of SOFCs can be critically affected by foreign species, including impurities and minor constituents in fuels and oxidants, from the raw materials of cell components, and from system components. This paper summarizes an effort to understand the impurity poisoning analyzed by adding specific impurity species into fuels under various operational conditions to clarify poisoning mechanisms and their concentration threshold. Possible acceleration procedures for poisoning phenomena have also been discussed.