News

The Real-SOFC project (Realising Reliable, Durable Energy Efficient and Cost Effective SOFC Systems) operating under EU Contract SES6-CT-2003-502612 will be concluding its work in December 2008. To celebrate the successful completion of the project and to disseminate findings and results of the 59 month programme the project held a one day conference in Brussels on 6 November. The Real-SOFC project brought together a highly specialised European consortium of industrial companies, research centres and academic bodies involved in research and development of materials, components and engineering solutions for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) .The overall project objectives were to meet challenges in solving the persisting problems of degradation with planar SOFCs. The project focused on the issues of gaining understanding of the degradation processes, finding solutions to reduce the performance loss and produce improved materials that were then tested in SOFC stacks. Real-SOFC has developed and optimized new anode, cathode and interconnect materials, which were demonstrated successfully for example in stacks of HEXIS AG, HTceramix SA, Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Systems, Topsoe Fuel Cell and in two long-term tests at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, the latter reaching the project goal of a 10,000 hours lifetime demonstration. Both stacks are still under operation and will meet the 12,000 hours until the end of December with a degradation rate around 5 mV/1,000 hours (approx. 0.5% / 1,000 hours). A detailed public summary report containing all the project highlights will be published on the Real-SOFC website soon.

[Picture: Dr. Robert Steinberger-Wilckens, project coordinator of the 6th framework project Real-SOFC, giving an overview presentation of the project outcomes to representatives of the SOFC related industry and the European Commission.]