CHARGE work on solid oxide electrolysis cells was presented at the 17th European SOFC & SOE Forum (EFCF 2026) in Lucerne, Switzerland, held from 30 June to 3 July 2026. The Forum is the thirtieth event in a conference series running since 1994 and is one of the main European meetings for high-temperature fuel cells, electrolysers and hydrogen processing.
The contribution came from the project’s Danish partner, the Technical University of Denmark, which leads Work Package 2 on impurity-tolerant cells:
“Breaking the bottleneck in the durability of Ni/YSZ-supported SOECs at high current densities”
M. Chen, X. Tong, M. Yu, V. Bilalis, Y. Shang, Y. Xie, H. Liu — DTU Energy Conversion and Storage
Oral presentation A1301, session A13 “Electrolyser Stacks”, Friday 3 July 2026
Current density is where the economics of electrolysis are decided. Running a cell harder means more hydrogen from the same stack, and therefore a lower capital cost per kilogram — but degradation has always risen faster than output, which is why commercial systems stay well below the current densities the technology can in principle reach. Nickel-YSZ fuel electrodes are the usual limit: at high current density the nickel network coarsens and retreats from the active interface, and the cell loses performance faster than an operator can accept.
This is the constraint CHARGE has to lift. The project targets degradation below 0.3 %/kh at 1–1.5 A/cm², in cells that at the same time tolerate the impurities carried by real industrial steam. An extended abstract accompanies the presentation in the conference proceedings.
The Forum programme is available at efcf.com.