# Monte Carlo Simulation of Three Phase Boundary Length in Cermet Anode of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

## Part of #Monte Carlo Simulation of Three Phase Boundary Length in Cermet Anode of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells# :

Publishing year : 2016

Conference : International Conference on Science and Engineering

Number of pages : 12

Abstract: A numerical model for calculating the active three-phase boundary length in a cermet structure of Ni-YSZ composites is developed to gain insight into the important microstructural behaviors of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) anodes. By combining Monte Carlo techniques for reconstructing random structures with experimental studies of detecting three-phase boundaries (TPBs), an SOFC anode can be modeled in three dimensions and can be calculated from the density of TPB in its structure. To study the effect of porosity and solid phases, simulations were performed for different porosities and nickel contents. Two different algorithms are used to generate an anode structure, one based on uniformly distributed random numbers, the other with and additional random walk in each step. The structures generated with random walkers are more likely to be the case. The results of the simulation confirmed that TPB density strongly depends on the porosity and the volume fraction of the anode components. The results show that the maximum TPB density occurs at a uniform volume fraction of solid components and a porosity of 30-35%. The methodology can be used to optimize the anode structure of SOFCs and to improve the performance of the system.