Harmonisation of SOFC Test Procedures under FCTESqa

Harmonising and eventually standardising fuel cell testing procedures for SOFC cells, stacks and possibly systems, is essential for comparing and assessing SOFC development results. The objective of the European project FCTESqa is to define a set of benchmark test procedures for evaluation of single cells, stacks and systems in terms of primarily performance and endurance, and secondarily tolerance for specific contaminants and transient operating conditions, i.e. thermal and redox cycling. The project comprises work packages that deal with test procedures for PEFC, MCFC, SOFC and stationary systems. It is expected that the European Commission will eventually prescribe these test procedures for evaluating the results obtained in fuel cell research and development projects. The pre-normative procedures yielded by FCTESqa will furthermore be used for contributing to the early and market-oriented development of official test standards by providing these as input to the authorised standardisation organisations worldwide. This paper will consider only test procedures for SOFC technology, in which case it was decided to focus the activities on single-cell and short-stack testing. The first tests in the experimental validation of these procedures clearly showed the necessity of the adaptation of certain parts of the procedures. Especially the requirement to define a robust set of testing procedures that yield test results independent of the test facility appeared not feasible. The adjusted procedures better meet this requirement. Furthermore the current set of procedures can easily be applied at low cost by any organisation assessing SOFC cell and stack development results.