Inverter control for solving sulfur contamination problem for solid oxide fuel cells in coal-fired power plants

This paper proposes a new method to raise the power of the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) stacks in a coal-fired SOFC-based power plant to solve the sulfur contamination problem of the SOFC stacks. Rather than rapidly raise the power demand from the DC link and therefore the SOFC stack in a single step, the method raises the power demand from the DC link gradually in multi-steps. As a result, a much reduced DC link capacitor can be used to supply the transient power and hold the DC link voltage, which makes the power-raising based sulfur contamination solution more feasible. The method has been verified with simulation and experimental work.