The Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell (SOEC) technology provides an efficient way to store electrical energy chemical energy, by converting CO2 and H2O to liquid fuels directly, or through syn-gas and the Fisher-Tropsch process. The ability to electrolyse both H2O and CO2, one by one, or simultaneously, gives SOEC an edge over other electrolysis technologies that are intolerant to carbon. Despite this advantage SOEC has not yet been commercialised, it is still not a worthwhile investment based due to a short lifetime. Hence, there is still a need for improvement.
This project addresses two of the major issues in CO2 electrolysis: Carbon deposition, while the cells should theoretically be tolerant running at specified potentials, carbon deposition has been observed. This leads to faster degradation. Impurity intolerance, SOEC are very intolerant to number of impurities found in CO2 flue gas from the industry, such as sulphur and phosphor. This is an issue as this cheap source of fuel then needs to undergo an expensive pre-processing before being used in SOEC.
Infiltration provides a method to change and improve the surface characteristics, by increasing the active surface area and changing the chemical composition, without going through the process of fabricating novel cell compositions. In this project SOEC FE are infiltrated with CGO and metal-CGO to achieve an increased impurity and carbon tolerance.