Preparation of porous nickel electrodes for molten carbonate fuel cells by non-aqueous tape casting

The casting behaviour, ultimate tensile strength and the sintering process of tapes consisting of nickel powder, ethanol, polyvinylbutyral as the binder, polyethylene glycol (molecular weight 200, PEG2) or dibutyl phthalate (DBP) as the plasticizer, and glycerol trioleate as the dispersant agent, were studied. On increasing powder content in the slurry the packing factor of nickel in the green increased, but the ultimate tensile stress and strain to failure decreased. Increasing binder to total binder ratio caused the green density and strain to failure to decrease, but the ultimate tensile stress increased for both PEG2 and DBP. The maximum strain to failure (about 35% for both PEG2 and DBP) in the case of DBP was obtained with an amount of plasticizer lower than that of PEG2. When tapes having different composition were sintered at various temperatures, a linear relation was found between packing factor and fired density, independently of the kind of binder and plasticizer used.