Diagnosis methodology and technique for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: a review

The present study aims to identify and recollect the articles existing in literature that deal malfunction or failure causes of SOFC cells and relative diagnostic systems. This work is motivated by the increasing demand for diagnostic techniques aimed at both increasing durability and fully exploiting SOFC benefits throughout system lifetime. This paper reviews SOFC cells degradation phenomena and relevant fault detection methodologies already available, having found a gap in literature, above all relative to SOFC electrode microstructural degradation related, specifically, to sintering of the electrode microstructure, poisoning of the cathode microstructure with chromium products outgassed from the interconnect plates, carbon deposition in the anode, anode sulfur poisoning and boron SOFC cathodes poisoning. It is therefore encouraged a future effort of the research activity in this specific sector. Instead, relative to the degradation phenomena that cause increase in Ohmic resistance, different papers already available in the technical literature have been presented and discussed, as mentioned in Sections 3 and 4. On the basis of the analysis results, it has been possible to identify specific parameters (or at least analysis methodologies to obtain them) that can be implemented in diagnostic systems for the detection of particular failure modes of such a typology.