Thermodynamic Performance Comparisons of Ideal Brayton Cycles Integrated with High Temperature Fuel Cells as Power Sources on Aircraft

Zhixing Ji, Fafu Guo, Tingting Zhu (), Kunlin Cheng, Silong Zhang, Jiang Qin and Peng Dong
Additional contact information
Zhixing Ji: School of Power and Energy, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710012, China
Fafu Guo: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Tingting Zhu: Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University of Twente, 7522 NB Enschede, The Netherlands
Kunlin Cheng: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Silong Zhang: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Jiang Qin: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Peng Dong: School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Developing hybrid electric aircraft is propitious to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption. Combustion engines coupled with solid oxide fuel cells are proposed for aircraft propulsion systems, where the compressor is powered by fuel cells instead of turbines. The thermal cycle of the new engine is obviously different from that of conventional combustion engines and can be characterized in the temperature entropy diagram under some reasonable assumptions, which were analyzed and investigated. Performance parameters, such as the specific thrust, are derived and can be expressed by several fundamental thermal parameters. Three different cycles integrating Brayton cycles and SOFC are shown. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The maximum operating pressure ratio of the Brayton cycles integrated with fuel cells is 32. The maximum thermal efficiency of the cycle at the lowest combustion temperature is 82.2%, while that of the BC is 65.1% at the high combustion temperature. (2) The new cycles can not work if the combustion temperature is lower than 1350 K. Otherwise, the fuel utilization will be too huge.

Keywords: solid oxide fuel cell; gas turbine; hybrid cycle; thermodynamic performance; hybrid electric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2805/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2805/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2805-:d:1057073

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().