Executive Summary : | The massive consumption of conventional source of energy as fossil fuel, has created a severe issues of global warming and environmental pollution. Albeit of environmental issues, the fossil fuels are the most important dependable source of energy for several decades. As the reserves of conventional fuels are limited, there is need to find alternative clean and sustainable renewable energy sources. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that at the end of 2050, fossil fuels will not contribute to any electricity generation in our planet. Research road map clearly indicating that, by the year of 2050, more than 90% of the world's energy needs meet by renewable energy sources. In recent years, biomass based renewable energy sources have attracted more worldwide attention. Biomass energy is widely distributed across the globe and it has the tendency to be regenerated quickly. However, large scale utilization of biomass energy is still confronted with high cost of transportation. If biomass is vaporized and converted into biosyngas or biogas, the cost of transportation could be reduced. In order to improve the utilization efficiency, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) could be opted as an effective alternative choice for the conversion of biomass energy to electrical power. In general, SOFCs operate at higher temperature (600-1000 °C) with high electrocatalytic performance, are having the advantageous feature of wide adaptability of different fuels. It consists of three major components: (1) anode at which fuel oxidation takes place. (2) cathode at which oxygen from air is reduced into oxide anion, and (3) electrolyte which transports the oxide anion from cathode to anode layer. Biosyngas is obtained from partial oxidation of solid biomass in a gasification unit using sir, oxygen, and steam as gasifying agent. The composition of biosyngas may vary with the source of biomass, type of the grassfires, and gasification agents. The typical composition of biosyngas generated by pure oxygen gasification process is as: H₂ (32%), CO (48%), CO₂ (15%), CH₄ (2%) and N₂ (3%). The raw generated biosyngas contains some contaminants like H₂S, NH₃, halides and alkali metals. SOFC could be promising technology to utilize the biosyngas. However, the considerable quantities of undesirable compounds (H₂S, NH₃ and halides) may cause consistent degradation of SOFC system. Thereby, a novel material for anode of SOFC is needed which could have a good tolerance to contaminates. |