Project goals
1. Apply protective coatings to a variety of steels relevant to solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and Balance of Plant (BOP) manufacturing in order to retain Cr evaporation from the interconnects in order to protect the SOFC stack from Chromium poisoning and secure long lifetime of the stack.
2. Retaining robustness of the protective layers under thermal cycling conditions as in real life stack operation.
3. Adapt the protective coatings to use on the fuel side in order to minimise long-term oxidation/corrosion in high fuel utilisation, high water content atmospheres.
4. Demonstrate low and stable contact area surface resistance (ASR) in stacks with coated interconnect steels (cathode and anode).
5. Benchmark layer deposition processes with regard to quality, performance and cost.
6. Demonstrate stack lifetime of ca. 10 000 hours (and longer after the project has terminated) with coated interconnect steels.
7. Develop accelerated testing methods for lifetime prediction towards 10 to 15 years of operation (stack and system, respectively) for SOFC stacks with coated interconnects.
8. Demonstrate industrial mass production cost reduction for the processes evaluated.
These goals directly address the topics of reliability, durability and cost effectiveness set out in the call text (cf. Section 3) for components used in SOFC stack and BOP manufacture.