Abstract:
The molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) is about to be introduced into the market as more efficient and environmental friendly energy converter than the conventional technique. The purposes of this research are three folds; first is to synthesize an electrolyte material for molten carbonate fuel cell , second is to fabricate an electrolyte tile by using dry pressing and tape casting and to study the effect of sintering conditions, i.e. temperature and time to the material structure and properties, and the last one is to characterize material structure including phase, microstructure, porosity, pore size and pore size distribution, electrical conductivity and compressive strength. The results apppeared that LiAlO, powder synthesized in this study comprised of y - LiA10, and small amount of P phase and (Liz-&)CO, powder which was doped to the ceramic powder. LiAlO, was prepared from 62 mol% Li2C03 and 38 mol% &C03.The electrolyte particle showed broad size distribution between 5 - 10 pm more than the size between 125 - 250 pm.The fabrication methods of electrolyte tiles were done by pressing 13 - 15 MPa and used agglomerate particles by the size of 250- 600 pm with some of 5 - 7 pm particle and sintered at 1000, 1100 and 1200 ํC for 2 hous form a porous tiles of 49, 52 and 54% porosity. The pore size distribution was about 0.2 - 0.6 pm (preferable 45 - 55% porosity and pore size distribution is about 0.2 - 0.8 pm) by mercury porosimetry technique. The electrical conductivity was measured by AC - Impedance analyzer and the results showed that the pressed specimen sintered at 1100 ํC had higher conductivity than others. The compressive strength of the tile was about 20.6 x 10' Pa. In this study, the electrolytes formed by tape casting have not reached the stage of having good properties yet.