Development of a thermodynamically consistent kinetic model for reactions in the solid oxide fuel cell

The parameter estimation using the traditional kinetic modeling of complex reaction systems will give incorrect results if the reaction mechanism contains a loop. In this work, a thermodynamically consistent kinetic model of the anodic electrochemical hydrogen oxidation reaction mechanism of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is formulated. An iterative algorithm for estimating the reaction rate constants using the thermodynamically consistent model formulation is developed. The kinetic parameters estimated using the proposed method gives a better fit to the experimental data. Using the concept of ‘Degree of rate control’ it is found that the surface reactions may have a greater role in deciding the overall rate. The proposed iterative parameter estimation algorithm developed in this work can also be adapted to other complex chemical and biochemical reaction networks for which the reaction rate constants need to be estimated using the experimental data.