A co-generation device is using SC-SOFCs with methane as fuel and a high-performance catalyst located in the center of Swiss-roll type heat re-circulating reactor (Fig. 1) to successfully achieve syngas and power co-generation. The detailed working mechanism is shown in Fig.2. Part of mixture of methane and oxygen, or air, will pass through the fuel cell anode resulting in partial oxidation:

This process generates fuels (syngas) for fuel cell. Part of syngas will be involved in fuel cell reactions to generate electricity, resulting in the production of CO2 and H2O. The downstream of fuel cell containing CH4, O2, CO2, H2O, CO H2 will have complex reactions such as CO2 (dry) reforming, partial oxidation and steam reforming when it gets through the catalyst:

Possibly, the reaction, complete oxidation may also happen. After that, the hot exhaust gas will heat up the incoming un-reacted fuel mixtures by using heat re-circulating reactor design. This design has the advantage of obtaining high power output, high methane conversion and syngas selectivity and neither product yield or selectivity are restricted by the polarization current. The existence of oxygen on the anode side will also effectively relieve the coking problem. This proposal provides a new way of thinking of the chemical energy conversion process.

​

Figure 1: SC-SOFC in conjunction with heat re-circulating reactor (without top plate) for co-generation

​

Figure 2: SC-SOFC and downstream catalyst used for co-generation