Modelling of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell CHP System Coupled with a Hot Water Storage Tank for a Single Household

Abstract

Abstract:In this paper a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system for cogeneration of heat and power integrated with a stratified heat storage tank is studied. The use of a storage tank with thermal stratification allows one to increase the annual operating hours of CHP: heat can be produced when the request is low (for instance during the night), taking advantage of thermal stratification to increases the heat recovery performance. A model of the SOFC system is presented to estimate the energy required to meet the average electric energy demand of the residence. Two fuels are considered, namely syngas produced by gasification and natural gas. The tank model considers the temperature gradients over the tank height. The results of the numerical simulation are used to size the SOFC system and storage heat tank to provide energy for a small household using two different fuels. In particular it was shown that in the case of syngas, due to larger system heat output, a larger tank volume was required in order to accumulate unused heat over the night. The detailed description of the tank model will be useful to energy system modelers when sizing hot water tanks. Problem formulation is reported also using a Matlab script.

Evaluation of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Systems Using Fuzzy Shannon Entropy and Fuzzy TOPSIS

“…The parameters determining the performance of the fuel cell are dependent on the electrolyte material and composition of the membrane electrode assembly MEA [91]. The relationship of the materials to the performance of the device is significant and many important contributions in this topic can be found in the literature [92][93][94][95][96][97]. There are several kinds of fuel cells classified on the basis of the electrochemical process utilized.…”

Feasibility assessment, process design and dynamic simulation for cogeneration of heat and power by steam reforming of diluted bioethanol

“…Therefore, the cogeneration system ( Figures 3 and 4) is thermally connected with a water Reservoir ('R') that stores the available enthalpy over time [26,34] and an air-cooled exchanger that discharges indirectly the power still in excess with respect to the present house needs and reservoir dispersion. The integration of a DHW supply follows the strategy of the network water micro-accumulation (at the same temperature of the reservoir) and on-demand further heating, rather than resorting to more complex stratified accumulation strategies [24].…”

“…The small-scale power production based on bioethanol is even more promising if it meets also the distributed market of co-generation, which is crucial to increase the overall energy saving and renewable source utilization in developed countries [20,21]: in fact, house-level cogeneration is useful to exploit the solar radiation [22,23] or to increase the value of traditional sources such as methane [24,25] or natural gas [21,26] and gasoline [20] (respectively the main feed stocks of the distributed or autonomous consumption), beside hydrogen itself [27]. Comparative technologies for sustainable hydrogen production are currently under study.…”

Combined heat and power plant using a multi-objective Henry gas solubility optimization algorithm: A thermodynamic investigation of energy, exergy, and economic (3E) analysis

“…Cogeneration has already been shown to be useful in medium and high-power applications and may have a vital role to play with residential, commercial, or industrial consumers. By generating power and heat simultaneously, the fuel is used more efficiently and generates less CO 2 than would generally be the case to achieve the same output ( Aliabadi et al, 2010 , Yang et al, 2014 , Liso et al, 2015 , Wu et al, 2016 , Valdés and Leon, 2019 ).…”