Experimental and theoretical model study on effective thermal conductivity of SOFC porous electrode

The flow heat transfer and chemical reaction inside the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) are complex, and it is easy to generate thermal imbalance zones. Obtaining high-precision effective thermal conductivity of porous electrodes is of great significance for the establishment of numerical analysis models of multi-physics field coupling and the thermal management. In this paper, an experimental platform and measurement system for the effective heat conduction system of porous materials was designed and constructed, which is based on the steady-state method. The temperature distribution of the porous electrode test specimens was measured in detail in the temperature range of 372.1~932.4K. Through the theoretical analysis of heat transfer in porous materials, the calculation model of the comprehensive effective thermal conductivity of temperature-corrected SOFC porous electrodes was constructed using the scale factor t, which combines the existing EMT and ME1 mathematical models. In addition, the validity and high precision of the effective thermal conductivity model were verified by comparing the calculated values with the experimental measurements of the surface temperatures of the three test specimens with the porosity of 0.2349~0.4178.