Overview of US Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy's Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Program

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy (FE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Program is committed to developing efficient, low-cost electricity from natural gas or coal with intrinsic carbon capture capabilities for distributed generation and central power generation applications; maintaining cell development and core technology research to increase the reliability, robustness, and durability of cell, stack, and system technology; and providing the technology base to permit cost-competitive distributed generation applications. Recent program efforts focused on addressing cell and system reliability (finding chromium contamination of the cathode a major contributor to performance degradation and reduced system reliability) and an Innovative Concepts initiative (developing novel cell and stack architectures and/or material sets). The status of these strategically oriented research programs, along with the status of the program's integrated systems tests and the roadmap to deploy a MWe-class natural gas-fueled distributed generation system, will be presented.