Abstract
Because of the rising share of renewable and volatile energy in the electrical grid, for example photovoltaic or wind power, the topic of energy storage is becoming increasingly important. Due to the structure and functionality of the electrical grid, a balance between supply and demand has to be achieved. In order to take advantage of the full potential of renewable energy sources, it is important to store electrical surplus energy with high efficiency and be able to reclaim that energy in a short amount of time. One way to achieve these goals is to convert water into hydrogen (Power-to-Gas) by means of electrolysis. The solid oxide electrolyser cell (SOEC) is a very efficient device which uses electrical energy to convert water into hydrogen at high temperatures. If a shortage in electrical energy occurs, the SOEC can in principle operate in reverse mode as a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) to convert hydrogen back into electrical energy and deliver it to the grid. In order to reduce the investment costs of such systems, it is important to operate them at higher current densities. To achieve this goal, high-performance electrode materials have to be developed and characterised. The Chair of Physical Chemistry in Leoben is synthesizing and characterising novel materials for application as air electrodes in SOFCs and SOECs. For the manufacture of solid oxide cells, the electrode materials are processed into a viscous paste and screen-printed onto commercially available half cells. For paste preparation, the synthesised materials are mixed with organic ink vehicles, which so far have been purchased from commercial sources. The goal of this thesis is to develop a suitable vehicle formulation from its organic components, use it to prepare printing pastes from electrode powders and assess the quality of the electrode layers obtained by screen-printing. The main parameters investigated in this work are the composition of the ink vehicle as well as the grain size of the electrode powder and the screen-printing procedure. Praseodymium nickelate with a composition Pr2NiO4+δ served as electrode material in this study. A rotational rheometer was used to examine the rheological behaviour of the pastes. Printing tests were performed with a semi-automatic screen-printing machine on 5×5 cm2 anode supported cells. During this thesis, it was possible to gain a deeper understanding about the relationship between vehicle composition, particle size of the powder and rheological properties of the paste. Moreover, a paste formulation and printing procedure was developed which produces electrode layers with only few printing errors.
Translated title of the contribution | Development of screen printing pastes for printing air electrodes on solid oxide cells |
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Original language | German |
Qualification | Dipl.-Ing. |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisors/Advisors |
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Award date | 23 Oct 2020 |
Publication status | Published - 2020 |
Bibliographical note
embargoed until nullKeywords
- SOFC
- SOEC
- vehicle
- screenprinting
- terpineol
- ethylcellulose
- PNO