The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded UMR's materials science and engineering department $100,000 for the continued development of glass-based seals for solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). "What we're doing is developing glasses that will hermetically seal the different components in a fuel cell," says the department chair, Dr. Richard Brow.
The UMR team is trying to engineer compatible materials that can operate over long periods of times at high temperatures. They start out with a form of glass that is converted to a ceramic material. The glass melts to form a seal and then crystallizes as a ceramic. Tests are conducted on campus to evaluate changes in material properties -- with heat treatments up to 800 degrees for several months.
According to Brow, the real engineering challenge is to find materials that maintain their integrity during repeated periods of heating and cooling. That's where the glass research comes in. "We're trying to develop sealing materials that expand and contract with temperature to the same degree as other SOFC materials," says Brow, who has been working on the problem for several years. "We're close to the point where the technology can be commercialized. Finding a way to hermetically seal an SOFC is very important. That's probably why we got funded. The DOE recognizes the importance of solving this problem."
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