Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) offers the prospect of clean, efficient, and quiet power across a wide range of system capacities, from a few hundred watts to multi-megawatts. And, because SOFCs can operate on a variety of currently available fossil fuels, they could be rolled out rapidly within the existing global fuel infrastructure.
Despite their significant promise, however, SOFCs have yet to meet the performance, durability, and cost targets needed to achieve commercial viability. To address these issues, developers have been focusing on problems at the stack level, such as low-power density that degrades over time, sealing issues that limit operating cycles, and impractical start-up times. At the source of these challenges-and therefore a critical barrier to SOFC commercialization-is the metal alloy interconnect used in fuel cell stacks.
TIAX has developed patent-pending interconnect materials that solve these major problems and enable the development of robust and reliable stacks and viable SOFC systems to meet market needs. TIAX's new metal matrix composite (MMC) interconnect materials combine the best properties of metal and ceramic components to offer unique and valuable thermo-mechanical-chemical properties. The TIAX interconnects solve the following critical limitations currently facing SOFC systems:
| Current SOFC Limitiations | TIAX Interconnect Solution |
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| Limited operating life due to poor stack reliability and performance |
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| Limited operating cycle (on/off operation) due to stack sealing issues |
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| Long start-up times due to thermal stresses |
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| High Cost due to low power density |
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