An Economic and Environmental Assessment Model for Selecting the Optimal Implementation Strategy of Fuel Cell Systems—A Focus on Building Energy Policy

Abstract

Considerable effort is being made to reduce the primary energy consumption in buildings. As part of this effort, fuel cell systems are attracting attention as a new/renewable energy systems for several reasons: (i) distributed generation system; (ii) combined heat and power system; and (iii) availability of various sources of hydrogen in the future. Therefore, this study aimed to develop an economic and environmental assessment model for selecting the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system, focusing on building energy policy. This study selected two types of buildings (i.e., residential buildings and non-residential buildings) as the target buildings and considered two types of building energy policies (i.e., the standard of energy cost calculation and the standard of a government subsidy). This study established the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system in terms of the life cycle cost and life cycle CO 2 emissions. For the residential building, it is recommended that the subsidy level and the system marginal price level be increased. For the non-residential building, it is recommended that gas energy cost be decreased and the system marginal price level be increased. The developed model could be applied to any other country or any other type of building according to building energy policy.

The Efficiency Improvement by Combining HHO Gas, Coal and Oil in Boiler for Electricity Generation

“…There are some studies about coal-fired boilers [7][8][9][10]. Figure 1 shows a schematic of a coal-fired oxy-fuel boiler [11], in which oxygen is first separated from the air and then mixed with a stream of recycled flue gases from the boiler.…”

A Process for the Implementation of New Renewable Energy Systems in a Building by Considering Environmental and Economic Effect

“…Possible alternatives of FC system can be established as follows [61]: (i) the target production of the heating and cooling energy with constraints (i.e., budget, area, size) is established through the application of the FC system; (ii) the scenarios of the FC system are established by considering the HVAC zone where the FC system is to be installed; and (iii) the energy production of the FC system is calculated by conducting energy simulation (the software program "RETScreen" and "Self-production program" based on the scenarios.…”

“…In this study, the analysis period was set by considering the service life of the NRE system [61][62][63][64][65].…”

Involving Environmental Assessment in the Optimal Design of Domestic Cogeneration Systems

“…Lee et al (2015) determined the environmental impact associated with a solid-oxide fuel cell. Kim et al (2014) developed an economic and environmental assessment model for selecting the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system. Balcombea et al (2015) investigated the impacts associated with the integrated system involving three CHP technologies.…”

“…Suzuki et al (2007) implemented a residential cogeneration system. Kim et al (2014) developed an economic and environmental assessment model for selecting the optimal implementation strategy of the fuel cell system focusing on building energy policy. For additional technologies, Hong et al (2014) implemented a fuel cellbased combined heat and power system for a multi-family housing complex located in Seoul, South Korea.…”