The development of a continuous anode for a Direct Carbon Fuel Cell

The Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (DCFC) is an electrical generation technology capable of producing electricity through the electrochemical oxidation of elemental carbon. This method of generation is highly efficient, projected to be over 80% in practice. This greatly increased efficiency compared to that of thermal cycles used within current power generation plants (ca. 40%) means that DCFC technology is an exciting proposal for solving some of the questions raised by the current world energy challenge. Currently, DCFC technology has not progressed beyond the laboratory scale, there are still some significant obstacles to be overcome before the technology can progress. Among the challenges is continuous operation, this is partly due to the lack of a continuous fuel delivery system for the solid carbon – this project aims to solve this problem (among others) by producing a prototype DCFC complete with continuous anode based on the Soderberg electrode found in aluminium refining.