SBIR-STTR Award

Adaptive Energy (AE) is a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) development and manufacturing company focused on providing reliable, robust, and cost-effective SOFC products at the 100-350W power output range. Due to the usage of microtubular SOFC cells (6.6 mm diameter tubes) in these products, AE’s SOFCs avoid the traditional pitfalls of larger SOFC systems – mainly sealing and thermal cycling. AE has a significant market presence in the unmanned/portable power market with a 350W high specific power SOFC (TRL8). This power system has an industry-leading specific power of 120W/kg. AE’s SOFC technology will be leveraged in this work to generate an advanced, high-efficiency 300W SOFC concept design that will be capable of bridging the existing performance gap between ICE and fuel cell technologies. This design will meet all of the stated program metrics, and be capable of operation in parallel achieve mission targets for dismounted soldier power. To achieve this high-efficiency design, a majority of this Phase I work will be focused on the feasibility analysis of integrating advanced hydrocarbon reforming concepts (Autothermal Reforming and Steam Reforming) into the existing AE SOFC products, and their resulting impact on system lifetime and mean time between failures (M