Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Power System

Adaptive Energy (AE) is a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) development and manufacturing company focused on providing reliable, robust, and cost-effective SOFC products at the 100-350W power output range. Due to the usage of microtubular SOFC cells (6.6mm diameter tubes) in these products, AE’s SOFCs avoid the traditional pitfalls of larger SOFC systems – mainly sealing and thermal cycling. The AE commercial 250W battery tending SOFC system (TRL9) is capable of 250 complete thermal cycles and 3,000 hours of endurance performance. As a result, AE has become a market leader in the sub-kilowatt backup & remote power industry. AE’s SOFC technology will be leveraged in this work to generate an extremely competitive 1-3kW SOFC concept design that will be capable of bridging the existing performance gap between ICE and fuel cell technologies. Many of the traditional planar SOFC challenges will be avoided with the microtubular AE technology (such as ability to thermally cycle and interconnect and sealing challenges). A majority of this Phase I work will be geared toward understanding the limitations to accelerating startup time for SOFCs and understanding the effects of vibration on microtubular SOFCs and on SOFC thermal insulation packages.