An experimental investigation on a single tubular SOFC for renewable energy based cogeneration system

Abstract

a b s t r a c tHaving negative impacts on environment and the scarcity of resources of conventional fossil fuels, fuel cell technology draws more attention as an alternative for providing the electrical energy in parallel with thermal energy. In this study, a single tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with an electrolyte of YttriaStabilized Zirconia 8 mol% ceramic powder was experimentally investigated. The investigation illustrated the effects of three different fuel flow-rates (175 ml/min, 250 ml/min and 325 ml/min) and two operating temperatures (650°C and 750°C) on the output electrical and thermal powers. The highest electrical voltage (open circuit) and overall output power of the cell were found to be 1.1 V and 5.30 W respectively for the fuel flow-rate of 250 ml/min at the operating temperature of 750°C. The electrical power and efficiency were increased about 18.80% and 1.27% respectively for the increase of operating temperature from 650°C to 750°C for a constant fuel flow-rate of 250 ml/min, where; thermal power and efficiency were increased about 33.33% and 10.51% respectively for the same condition. The overall efficiencies of the fuel cell were obtained about 80.42%, 77.49% and 60.73% for the fuel flow-rates of 175 ml/min, 250 ml/min and 325 ml/min respectively for the operating temperatures of 650°C. On the other hand, the overall efficiency of the cell was found to be 83.38% at the operating temperature of 750°C and fuel flow-rate of 250 ml/min. The investigation recommends that for achieving higher efficiency, fuel flow-rate should be lower and operating temperature should be higher.

A techno-economic assessment of a combined heat and power photovoltaic/fuel cell/battery energy system in Malaysia hospital

“…Thanakorn et al developed an economic and environmental friendly CHP system for the application of building energy management system for a large shopping complex, where the impact of the cogeneration operation on the environment, multi-objective cost functions, including total operating cost, the minimum total carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, and optimal energy flows are considered [11]. K. R. Ullah prove experimentally that a single tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) can produce the heat to be used in cogeneration system [12]. A comparison of different operating strategies for small scale CHP plants fired by natural gas and solid biomass to serve the residential energy demand is studied in Ref.…”

Optimised MOPSO with the grey relationship analysis for the multi-criteria objective energy dispatch of a novel SOFC-solar hybrid CCHP residential system in the UK

“…The power output of a single cell 𝑊 ̇! "## [33] and a stack 𝑊 ̇01 [34] can be determined by Eq. ( 2) and Eq.…”

“…where 𝐶𝑅𝐹 is the capital recovery factor, 𝑓 01 , 𝑓 IJ , 𝑓 H= , 𝑓 :I , 𝑓 :_ and 𝑓 `1 are the capital cost of the SOFC, the PV, the battery, the heat pump, the heat exchanger and the absorption chiller detailed in ( 29) to (34) is the price of electricity imported from the grid, 𝑊 ̇MN ( is the electrical power imported from the grid, 𝑖 % is the interest rate (assumed as 0.5% derived from the UK's past ten-year bank rates [41]), 𝑛 is the system life (20 years) [42], and 𝑁 is the number of operating hours per year (8760 h/year). The expressions for the capital costs of the key system components are listed below [42], [17], [43], [44] and [45].…”

Numerical prediction of system round-trip efficiency and feasible operating conditions of small-scale solid oxide iron–air battery

“…A solid oxide fuel cell has an advantage of high power generation efficiency even in systems with a relatively small capacity. Intensive research and development are underway with variety of possible applications such as portable systems [1,2], residential cogeneration system [3][4][5], vehicle APUs [6] and power supply systems including hybrid system with gas turbines [7,8]. Recently, much attention has also been focused on its reverse reaction, namely, electrolysis [9][10][11].…”