Abstrato

A Study on the Present Status of Zirconia based Electrolytes for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Sharma P, Singh KL and Singh AP

Aim of the present study is to provide an insight of development of electrolyte material for Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). In the recent years the major interest is to reduce the working temperature of SOFC, so that, the problems like thermal instability, high chemical reactivity, etc. can be minimized as well as life of a fuel cell can be increased with reduction in the cost. Also the reduction of the working temperature of SOFCs is urgently required for its broad commercialization. But as the operating temperature of SOFCs depends upon the choice of electrolyte material, this requires the development of electrolyte materials with sufficient ionic conductivity even in low temperature range. The most commonly used electrolyte material in SOFC is ZrO2 doped with trivalent oxides to introduce vacancies into the oxygen lattice through which the O2 − ions can be transported. In this paper prospects and problems of doped Zirconia as SOFC electrolyte are discussed and comparative study of performance of various materials as electrolyte is done.but none of them fully assure the growing need of waste management in major cities. In this work we have compared various methods of waste management and suggested a better method of plasma gasification, in which pyrolysis of solid waste takes place at very high temperature thus ensuring syngases as the output of gasifier. The method not only treats all types of waste, but also produces many useful by-products and electricity.