Towards practicable methods for carbon removal from Ni-YSZ anodes and restoring the performance of commercial-sized ASC-SOFCs after carbon deposition induced degradation

Abstract Carbon deposition is one of the major degradation sources, which reduces the activity of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and it can even cause irreversible cell degradation. In order to counteract this phenomenon and thus to extend the SOFC lifetime, development of effective cell-protecting strategies for carbon re-gasification and restoring of the cell performance is of crucial importance, since other methods considering prevention of this degradation phenomenon can mean an increased system complexity or reduced system performance. In the literature there is very limited data relating to the performance of SOFCs after the carbon removal process has been executed. This study aims to analyze carbon removal techniques and moreover their effect on the SOFC performance as well as possibilities for industrial application. Various innovative approaches for carbon re-gasification are scrutinized and detailed explained within this study on 20 samples, which further help to provide potential carbon removal procedures relevant for industrial SOFC systems.