Cooling Technology for MCFC Stack

Abstract

This research is intended to study relationship between cooling design of molten carbonate fuel cell(MCFC)stack and stack / system performance quantitatively. Firstly energy balance and temperature distribution are studied in 10 kW internal reforming(IR)MCFC stack. Based on the analysis 57% of waste heat is removed by endothermic reforming reaction in the IR-MCFC. The rest of the waste heat is removed by cathode gas. Cooling by internal reforming reaction(IR-cooling)reduces flow rate of recycled cathode gas necessary for stack colling, which improves stack voltage and system performance. As for the temperature distribution, IR-colling establishes more flat distribution, which increases average stack temperature and improves stack voltage. The present IR-MCFC has not fully taken advantage of the above profits of the IR-cooling design. By increasing capacity of IR-cooling, further improvement of stack / system performance can be achieved.