Recent Progress of Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC)

Abstract

The MCFC power generation system is developed under the New Sunshine Project of MITI. A 1000kW pilot plant which has four 250kW stacks of external reforming type is under construction and will generate the power in 1998FY. On the other hand, the internal reforming type has a plan of 200kW stack development until 1999FY. Recent stack tests show average cell voltages of 0.78V to 0.8V in the conditions of 150mA/cm², 80% fuel utilization of LNG reformed gas under normal pressure, and cell degradation rates of about 5mV/1000h for 15000 hours operation for the both. A commercialized MCFC plant will require to have the stack which has over 0.8V average cell voltage, 2mV/1000h degradation rate and 40000 hours life. The stack life improvement is improtantly, but it is able to catch this targets until 1999FY by the improvements of cathode dissolution, electrolyte plate stability and the optimization of separator structure.