One of the issues of the greatest concern in integrated gasification (IGFC) systems is the high risk of composition changes in coal-derived syngas, which is strongly influenced by coal qualities and/or gasifier technologies.The main goal of this work was to assess the impacts of syngas compositions resulting from different gasifier technologies on the fuel cell degradation rate. The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) response to various syngas compositions was investigated using a one-dimensional (1D) distributed fuel cell model that incorporates an empirical expression of localized SOFC degradation as a function of fuel cell solid temperature, current density, and fuel utilization. The process performance using four different syngas compositions was also compared to a humidified hydrogen operation as a baseline.The results showed a correlation of degradation most significantly with the methane content of the fuels selected. At constant stack power production and constant global fuel utilization, the results demonstrated that increasing the methane content in coal-derived syngas shifted the peak of degradation rate from the inlet toward the center of the cell. Overall, the highest localized degradation rate with respect to voltage in all five cases was observed at 3.65%/1000 hr. The lowest overall rate of 1.89%/1000 hr was indicated in the case for humidified hydrogen. Increasing methane content to 17% in syngas increased the overall degradation rate to 3.05%/1000 hr.
