qSOFC project has contributed to solid oxide stack development by enhancing manufacturing and quality assurance at key parts of the stack manufacturing value-chain. The specific improvements include improved cell manufacturing and automated machine vision-based inspection system for cells, better understanding of interconnect steel and coating manufacturing and related quality assurance as well as significant cost reduction and improved stack quality through development of stack assembly and conditioning processes. All of these improvements lead to an improved quality and cost-structure of components and stacks, leading to significant cost reductions. The qSOFC partners have analyzed that at 10 MW/year production volume stack manufacturing cost of 1100 eur/kW is only slightly above qSOFC final target of 1000 eur/kW, which will be reached at a production volume of about 15 MW/year. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that at mass production (1000 MW/year) a stack cost of 500 eur/kW can be reached which. This gives a solid ground for further manufacturing and quality control development and scaling up production volumes.
In terms of technical highlights, in the qSOFC project a machine vision inspection system for cell manufacturing was developed by HaikuTech. The system is able to detect six different types of defects down to ~10 µm of size. The system performs a 100% visual inspection of a cell in 10 s, including scanning and analysis. This allows cell manufacturers to increase their production quality as well as gather data of defects vs. cell performance to further understand the critical defects and allowable occurence limits of defects. HaikuTech has now commercialized the machine vision inspection system and are offering it to cell manufacturers as well as investigating possible other uses for the system outside solid oxide cell industry.
Cell manufacturing process has been optimized for high-speed manufacturing targeting initial 10 MW/year production volume. Cell manufacturing process has also been made compliant to REACH-regulations making further upscaling easier and more environmentally friendly.
Interconnect materials as well as manufacturing and quality assurance was also developed. The production of interconnect steels as well as coated steel materials at Sandvik are ready for significant mass-manufacturing volumes. The multi-stage-manufacturing of interconnect assemblies at ElringKlinger was analysed and optimized during the project to increase quality and yield.
Stack conditioning procedures were developed in the project to reduce overall stack manufacturing time as well as CAPEX needed for manufacturing and conditioning equipment. Through modifications and streamlining of stack conditioning procedure, a 75% reduction in conditioning time was achieved, leading to 60% reduction of CAPEX costs related to stack conditioning.
All of the results and improvements developed during the qSOFC project have been implemented or are in the planning stage to be implemented at the production of related companies. As the component-manufacturers such as ElringKlinger (interconnects) and Elcogen AS (cells) provide components to several fuel cell stack manufacturers, the benefits of the project will be available not only for one specific stack manufacturer but for the whole community. Some of the innovations from the qSOFC project can also be utilized in other industrial applications outside fuel cell manufacturing. For example, the machine vision inspection system can be used with relatively small modifications to inspect quality of other products such as different fired ceramics.
qSOFC project has promoted and discussed the results through several events, including Workshops in Brugge (2017) and in Naples (2019) as well as a joint video with DEMOSOFC and INNOSOFC projects (
https://youtu.be/KK-sjnnEcuo(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)). A number of presentations, posters and articles have also be written to the scientific community and to general public.
The project has led to substancial improvement of the operations of the participating companies as well as increasing business opportunities. Partially based on the results from qSOFC and INNOSOFC -projects, Elcogen has also secured a loan from the European Investment Bank for further R&D as well as building a first factory for cells and stacks. The construction of the factory is scheduled to start in Q1/2021.
