Development of a highly efficient solid oxide fuel cell system

Kanghun Lee, Sanggyu Kang and Kook-Young Ahn

Applied Energy, 2017, vol. 205, issue C, 822-833

Abstract: The overall efficiency of a high-temperature fuel cell system can be enhanced by reuse of the unreacted fuel and the thermal energy from the system exhaust gas. Much of the steam in the anode off gas (AOG) can also be used for the methane steam reforming (MSR) reaction. In this study, a novel SOFC system has been developed. An ejector instead of a regenerative blower has been selected as a recirculation device for the AOG. The cathode air blower has been replaced with a turbocharger. To verify the efficiency enhancement of the proposed system, two other reference systems are presented, and their efficiencies are compared using Aspen Plus®. To estimate the system performance more accurately, a lumped electrochemical SOFC model and a one-dimensional ejector model are incorporated into the system model, using a Fortran® subroutine. To determine the optimal operating schemes for the presented system, its performance has been compared with that of two other reference systems by varying the operating parameters, such as the external reforming (ER) ratio, the fuel utilization, and the steam to carbon (S/C) ratio. Sensitivity analysis for the three systems has been conducted to determine the dominant operating parameters related to the system efficiency.

Keywords: Solid oxide fuel cell; Anode off gas; Ejector; Turbocharger; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261917310760
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:205:y:2017:i:c:p:822-833

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.08.070

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().