Accelerated Degradation for Hardware in the Loop Simulation of Fuel Cell-Gas Turbine Hybrid System

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, WV has developed the hybrid performance (HyPer) project in which a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) one-dimensional (1D), real-time operating model is coupled to a gas turbine hardware system by utilizing hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

To assess the long-term stability of the SOFC part of the system, electrochemical degradation due to operating conditions such as current density and fuel utilization have been incorporated into the SOFC model and successfully recreated in real time. The mathematical expression for degradation rate was obtained through the analysis of empirical voltage versus time plots for different current densities and fuel utilizations.