Testing of solid oxide cells at high current densities

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Weber

Abstract Solid Oxide Cells (SOCs) have gained an increasing interest as electrochemical energy converters due to their high efficiency, fuel flexibility and ability of reversible fuel cell/electrolysis operation. During the development process as well as in quality assurance tests, the performance of single cells and cell stacks is commonly evaluated by means of current/voltage- (CV-) characteristics. Despite of the fact that the measurement of a CV-characteristic seems to be simple compared to more complex, dynamic methods as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy or current interrupt techniques, the resulting performance strongly depends on the test setup and the chosen operating conditions. In this paper, the impact of different single cell testing environments and operating conditions on the CV-characteristic of high performance cells is discussed. The influence of cell size, contacting and current collection, contact pressure, fuel flow rate and composition on the achievable cell performance is presented and limitations arising from the test bed and testing conditions will be pointed out. As today’s high performance cells are capable of delivering current densities of several ampere per cm2 a special emphasis will be laid on single cell testing in this current range.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aiswarya Krishnakumar Padinjarethil ◽  
Fiammetta Rita Bianchi ◽  
Barbara Bosio ◽  
Anke Hagen

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) have emerged as an attractive alternative for efficient cogeneration of electricity and heat with reduced emissions during operation. High working temperatures result in optimized kinetics and higher efficiencies in comparison to other fuel cell types. Among different designs, Anode Supported Cells (ASCs) and Electrolyte Supported Cells are currently the most promising configurations on a commercial scale. This work analyses these two designs with a focus on electrochemical features as the main performance marker. The study was carried out using both theoretical and experimental approaches on planar single cells. A detailed test campaign at different operating conditions in terms of temperature, fuel and oxidant composition was designed. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and current-voltage (I-V) measurements were used to identify the contributions of different cell components. The electrochemical kinetics derived from the individual resistance terms was implemented in a 2D simulation tool (SIMFC-SIMulation of Fuel Cells) to obtain the detailed global cell behaviour and to understand local occurring mechanisms on anodic and cathodic cell planes. The model was validated for an anode supported cell consisting of Ni-YSZ/YSZ/LSCF-CGO and an electrolyte supported cell consisting of Ni-CGO/YSZ/LSCF-CGO, showing the possibility to tune the parameters depending on analysed cells.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingjian Zhang ◽  
Trevor Chan ◽  
Michael Mak

AbstractCancer cell metastasis is a major factor in cancer-related mortality. During the process of metastasis, cancer cells exhibit migratory phenotypes and invade through pores in the dense extracellular matrix. However, the characterization of morphological and subcellular features of cells in similar migratory phenotypes and the effects of geometric confinement on cell morphodynamics are not well understood. Here, we investigate the phenotypes of highly aggressive MDA-MB-231 cells in single cell and cell doublet (an initial and simplified collective state) forms in confined microenvironments. We group phenotypically similar single cells and cell doublets and characterize related morphological and subcellular features. We further detect two distinct migratory phenotypes, fluctuating and non-fluctuating, within the fast migrating single cell group. In addition, we demonstrate an increase in the number of protrusions formed at the leading edge of cells after invasion through geometric confinement. Finally, we track the short and long term effects of varied degrees of confinement on protrusion formation. Overall, our findings elucidate the underlying morphological and subcellular features associated with different single cell and cell doublet phenotypes and the impact of invasion through confined geometry on cell behavior.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-234
Author(s):  
Robert Hendron ◽  
Mark Eastment ◽  
Ed Hancock ◽  
Greg Barker ◽  
Paul Reeves

Building America (BA) partner McStain Neighborhoods built the Discovery House in Loveland, CO, with an extensive package of energy-efficient features, including a high-performance envelope, efficient mechanical systems, a solar water heater integrated with the space-heating system, a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV), and ENERGY STAR appliances. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Building Science Consortium conducted short-term field-testing and building energy simulations to evaluate the performance of the house. These evaluations are utilized by BA to improve future prototype designs and to identify critical research needs. The Discovery House building envelope and ducts were very tight under normal operating conditions. The HRV provided fresh air at a rate of about 35L∕s(75cfm), consistent with the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 62.2. The solar hot water system is expected to meet the bulk of the domestic hot water (DHW) load (>83%), but only about 12% of the space-heating load. DOE-2.2 simulations predict whole-house source energy savings of 54% compared to the BA Benchmark (Hendron, R., 2005 NREL Report No. 37529, NREL, Golden, CO). The largest contributors to energy savings beyond McStain’s standard practice are the solar water heater, HRV, improved air distribution, high-efficiency boiler, and compact fluorescent lighting package.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imad Abugessaisa ◽  
Shuhei Noguchi ◽  
Melissa Cardon ◽  
Akira Hasegawa ◽  
Kazuhide Watanabe ◽  
...  

AbstractAnalysis and interpretation of single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) experiments are compromised by the presence of poor quality cells. For meaningful analyses, such poor quality cells should be excluded to avoid biases and large variation. However, no clear guidelines exist. We introduce SkewC, a novel quality-assessment method to identify poor quality single-cells in scRNA-seq experiments. The method is based on the assessment of gene coverage for each single cell and its skewness as a quality measure. To validate the method, we investigated the impact of poor quality cells on downstream analyses and compared biological differences between typical and poor quality cells. Moreover, we measured the ratio of intergenic expression, suggesting genomic contamination, and foreign organism contamination of single-cell samples. SkewC is tested in 37,993 single-cells generated by 15 scRNA-seq protocols. We envision SkewC as an indispensable QC method to be incorporated into scRNA-seq experiment to preclude the possibility of scRNA-seq data misinterpretation.


Author(s):  
Agate Martin ◽  
Patrick Trinke ◽  
Markus Stähler ◽  
Andrea Stähler ◽  
Fabian Scheepers ◽  
...  

Abstract Hydrogen crossover poses a crucial issue for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) water electrolysers in terms of safe operation and efficiency losses, especially at increased hydrogen pressures. Besides the impact of external operating conditions, the structural properties of the materials also influence the mass transport within the cell. In this study, we provide an analysis of the effect of elevated cathode pressures (up to 15 bar) in addition to increased compression of the membrane electrode assembly on hydrogen crossover and the cell performance, using thin Nafion 212 membranes and current densities up to 3.6 A cm-2. It is shown that a higher compression leads to increased mass transport overpotentials, although the overall cell performance is improved due to the decreased ohmic losses. The mass transport limitations also become visible in enhanced anodic hydrogen contents with increasing compression at high current densities. Moreover, increases in cathode pressure are amplifying the compression effect on hydrogen crossover and mass transport losses. The results indicate that the cell voltage should not be the only criterion for optimizing the system design, but that the material design has to be considered for the reduction of hydrogen crossover in PEM water electrolysis.


Author(s):  
Robert Hendron ◽  
Mark Eastment ◽  
Ed Hancock ◽  
Greg Barker ◽  
Paul Reeves

Building America (BA) partner McStain Neighborhoods built the Discovery House in Loveland, Colorado, with an extensive package of energy-efficient features, including a high-performance envelope, efficient mechanical systems, a solar water heater integrated with the space-heating system, a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV), and ENERGY STAR™ appliances. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Building Science Consortium (BSC) conducted short-term field-testing and building energy simulations to evaluate the performance of the house. These evaluations are utilized by BA to improve future prototype designs and to identify critical research needs. The Discovery House building envelope and ducts were very tight under normal operating conditions. The HRV provided fresh air at a rate of about 75 cfm (35 l/s), consistent with the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 62.2. The solar hot water system is expected to meet the bulk of the domestic hot water (DHW) load (>83%), but only about 12% of the space-heating load. DOE-2.2 simulations predict whole-house source energy savings of 54% compared to the BA Benchmark [1]. The largest contributors to energy savings beyond McStain’s standard practice are the solar water heater, HRV, improved air distribution, high-efficiency boiler, and compact fluorescent lighting package.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (46) ◽  
pp. 28784-28794
Author(s):  
Sisi Chen ◽  
Paul Rivaud ◽  
Jong H. Park ◽  
Tiffany Tsou ◽  
Emeric Charles ◽  
...  

Single-cell measurement techniques can now probe gene expression in heterogeneous cell populations from the human body across a range of environmental and physiological conditions. However, new mathematical and computational methods are required to represent and analyze gene-expression changes that occur in complex mixtures of single cells as they respond to signals, drugs, or disease states. Here, we introduce a mathematical modeling platform, PopAlign, that automatically identifies subpopulations of cells within a heterogeneous mixture and tracks gene-expression and cell-abundance changes across subpopulations by constructing and comparing probabilistic models. Probabilistic models provide a low-error, compressed representation of single-cell data that enables efficient large-scale computations. We apply PopAlign to analyze the impact of 40 different immunomodulatory compounds on a heterogeneous population of donor-derived human immune cells as well as patient-specific disease signatures in multiple myeloma. PopAlign scales to comparisons involving tens to hundreds of samples, enabling large-scale studies of natural and engineered cell populations as they respond to drugs, signals, or physiological change.


Author(s):  
Mona K. Tonn ◽  
Philipp Thomas ◽  
Mauricio Barahona ◽  
Diego A. Oyarzún

Metabolic heterogeneity is widely recognized as the next challenge in our understanding of non-genetic variation. A growing body of evidence suggests that metabolic heterogeneity may result from the inherent stochasticity of intracellular events. However, metabolism has been traditionally viewed as a purely deterministic process, on the basis that highly abundant metabolites tend to filter out stochastic phenomena. Here we bridge this gap with a general method for prediction of metabolite distributions across single cells. By exploiting the separation of time scales between enzyme expression and enzyme kinetics, our method produces estimates for metabolite distributions without the lengthy stochastic simulations that would be typically required for large metabolic models. The metabolite distributions take the form of Gaussian mixture models that are directly computable from single-cell expression data and standard deterministic models for metabolic pathways. The proposed mixture models provide a systematic method to predict the impact of biochemical parameters on metabolite distributions. Our method lays the groundwork for identifying the molecular processes that shape metabolic heterogeneity and its functional implications in disease.


Author(s):  
Hanno Stagge ◽  
Lars Doerrer ◽  
Ralf Benger ◽  
Beck Hans-Peter

Fuel cells consist of single cells that are connected in series to form a stack. This increases output voltage and therefore decreases current-dependent power losses, but the electric current of the stack has to flow through each single cell. In case of an increase of resistance or a failure of just one single cell the whole stack is affected. The failure tolerance of a parallel connection is higher. The serial and parallel connection of single solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) is compared under the aspects of failure probability, power drop and stress on the single cells. With both a highly linearized and a complex SOFC model simulations have been accomplished of the connection of two single cells in parallel and in serial configuration. Additionally different connection concepts of 16 single cells were examined. Finally, an outlook on different other source or storage technologies for electric energy like batteries and photovoltaic cells is given.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (18) ◽  
pp. E3659-E3668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Wiegand ◽  
Jonathan Spindler ◽  
Feiyu F. Hong ◽  
Wei Shao ◽  
Joshua C. Cyktor ◽  
...  

Little is known about the fraction of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) proviruses that express unspliced viral RNA in vivo or about the levels of HIV RNA expression within single infected cells. We developed a sensitive cell-associated HIV RNA and DNA single-genome sequencing (CARD-SGS) method to investigate fractional proviral expression of HIV RNA (1.3-kb fragment of p6, protease, and reverse transcriptase) and the levels of HIV RNA in single HIV-infected cells from blood samples obtained from individuals with viremia or individuals on long-term suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART). Spiking experiments show that the CARD-SGS method can detect a single cell expressing HIV RNA. Applying CARD-SGS to blood mononuclear cells in six samples from four HIV-infected donors (one with viremia and not on ART and three with viremia suppressed on ART) revealed that an average of 7% of proviruses (range: 2–18%) expressed HIV RNA. Levels of expression varied from one to 62 HIV RNA molecules per cell (median of 1). CARD-SGS also revealed the frequent expression of identical HIV RNA sequences across multiple single cells and across multiple time points in donors on suppressive ART consistent with constitutive expression of HIV RNA in infected cell clones. Defective proviruses were found to express HIV RNA at levels similar to those proviruses that had no obvious defects. CARD-SGS is a useful tool to characterize fractional proviral expression in single infected cells that persist despite ART and to assess the impact of experimental interventions on proviral populations and their expression.


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