Progress in SOC Development at Fraunhofer IKTS

Despite long and successful development history of Solid Oxide Cells (SOC) continuous improvement in performance, longevity, manufacturing and system integration is necessary to bring this highly efficient technology to the market. The activities on material development and optimization at IKTS are focused mainly on enhancement of durability in SOFC, SOEC and rSOC operation and on boosting the power density for electrolysis operation. The recent results show considerable enhancement in cell longevity and power density. The SOC priorities in applied research are moving from materials to industrialization and Fraunhofer as applied R&D service provider is following this trend. During recent years considerable efforts on simplification and automation of cell and stack manufacturing processes has been addressed at IKTS. The manufacturing processes for electrode manufacturing have been adjusted for high yield automated printing on thin electrolytes with integrated quality control measures. The efficient ways for reduction of time and energy consumption for sealing process of SOC stacks have been found and shown in pilot production as well as automated assembling of components to stacks demonstrated. Furthermore the stack integration into modules utilizing stacks of different providers has been addressed during last years and reliable solutions for building of compact stack modules of higher power (2 to 10 kW) has been developed and tested with industrial partners. The increasing interest in “green hydrogen” generated multiple opportunities for SOEC technology to be considered as inherent part of industrial and chemical processes. IKTS pioneering work on coupled operation of SOEC module with Fischer-Tropsch reactor provided first demonstration of feasibility of this approach for waxes production. The process design and analysis of steel, using SOEC technology, has been performed and resulted in multiple demonstration activities in last four years. Recently novel approaches for ammonia production are addressed at IKTS showing opportunity for transportable chemicals/fuel production without need of CO2 source. High power electrolysis applications (>10 MW) will need new approaches for stack design and put higher requirements on durability. High power electrolysis applications will also open a new window of opportunities for industrial SOFC power plants. This vision is considered as outline for our future research.