Impact of carbon deposition on diffusion parameters in porous anodes of solid oxide fuel cells using the lattice Boltzmann method

A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an electrochemical device that converts energy of a chemical reaction into electrical and thermal energy. Besides lack of pollutants and high electrical efficiency, one of the main advantages of SOFCs is the flexibility of using a wide range of fuels, i.e., natural gas, biogas, or any reactant with hydrogen as constituent. However, the use of hydrocarbon fuels can affect the transport phenomena within the SOFC porous anode due to carbon deposition. The purpose of this work is to investigate, at pore-scale level, the impact of carbon deposition on the microstructural parameters that describes the diffusion process. The single-phase fluid flow behavior through digitally generated SOFC anodes is obtained by the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Diffusion transport parameters, i.e., porosity, gas-phase tortuosity and effective diffusion coefficient are computed for different content of carbon deposition to be able to evaluate its impact.