Economic analysis of the manufacturing process of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and stacks (European project AMPS)

The global energy transition is one of the defining challenges of our time: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while guaranteeing reliable and affordable energy supply, requires more efficient, flexible and economically viable technologies based on renewable sources. Among the different solutions under research, hydrogen-based technologies have gained relevance in the last years and they could play a role in the decarbonization of energy-intensive sectors. In particular, fuel cells have attracted increasing attention, with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) emerging as one of the most promising options. SOFCs combine several advantages like high operating temperatures, electrical efficiencies above 60% or even higher, flexibility in terms of fuel choice as they can work with hydrogen but also with natural gas, biogas or syngas. At the same time, they allow produce very low levels of local emissions, offering clear environmental benefits compared to conventional combustion technologies. However, one of the main obstacles to the widespread deployment of SOFCs remains their cost: manufacturing requires advanced and rare materials, including currently complex processes and limited production volumes, all of them contributing to define relatively high prices compared to conventional energy alternatives. For this reason, understanding the economic structure of SOFC production is a crucial need to identify where the bottlenecks are, which steps can be improved and how the technology might become competitive at large scale. Ensuring this premise, several initiatives have been launched to address these challenges: among them, one of the most relevant is the European AMPS project, which aims to develop an automated and cost-effective mass production of SOFC stacks. Specifically, it focuses on the manufacturing processes adopted by the company Elcogen, a European company active in this field, analyzing all the factors involved in the creation of the SOFC stacks. This project defined also some ambitious targets associated to the stack manufacturing, like the one of achieving a 800 €/kW overall stack cost in long-term scenarios. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to take part to this project with a detailed economic evaluation of Elcogen cells and stacks, paying attention on the process characteristics and how materials, chemicals, energy use, labor, waste management and assembly contribute to the overall production costs. The considered approach is based on a bottom-up economic model derived from industrial data (including both publicly available sources and information provided by Elcogen), technical papers and scientific literature sources: by breaking down the entire manufacturing chain and searching the expenses of each contribution, the total expenditures of production and their relative impact are considered. In addition, sensitivity evaluations are conducted in order to understand how key variables - such as production volume or energy prices - could affect the final cost of the cell or stack, making also possible to evaluate potential cost reductions linked to economies of scale, technological improvements or process optimization.