The overall objective of LOWCOST-IC is to contribute to the successful upscaling and widespread commercialization of Solid Oxide Cell (SOC) technology by:
Increasing the robustness and lifetime of SOC stacks
- Novel contact layers, based on a reactive oxidative bonding concept, will increase the mechanical fracture energy of the cell-interconnect contact by > 200 % compared to state of the art
- Highly protective coatings on the interconnect will reduce the Ohmic resistance
- Novel interconnect designs will reduce the maximum stress by > 30 % in the cell-interconnect interface, while maintaining a low pressure drop (< 30 mbar)
- Stable operation with the new contact layers and coated interconnects will be demonstrated for > 3000 hours and 50 cycles in multiple 1 kW stacks
Minimizing the interconnect development and production costs
- Cheaper high-volume steel grades will reduce the interconnect raw material cost by > 80 %.
- State-of-the-art large-scale roll-to-roll manufacturing methods will be used for both interconnect coating and shaping, and a fast drop-on-demand (DoD) printing technology will be used for application of the contact layer.
- A flexible and cost-effective interconnect development route with design iteration cost < 10 % of state of the art will be demonstrated by applying computationally highly efficient SOC stack models for designing the interconnect and hydroforming for shaping.
An overview of the project activities is shown in the Perth diagram below. More information about the different work packages (WP) can be found in the left-hand side menu.
