Component sizing and energy management for SOFC-based ship power systems

Ali Haseltalab,Lindert Van Biert,Harsh Sapra,Benny Mestemaker,Rudy R Negenborn

doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114625

Ali Haseltalab, Lindert Van Biert + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114625

Copy DOI

Journal: Energy Conversion	Publication Date: Aug 19, 2021
Citations: 35	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Delft University of Technology

Abstract

The shipping industry is facing increasing demands to reduce its environmental footprints. This has resulted in adoption of new and more environmental friendly power sources and fuels for on-board power generation. One of these novel power sources is the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) which has a great potential to act as a power source, thanks to its high efficiency and capability to handle a wide variety of fuel types. However, SOFCs suffer from low transient capabilities and therefore have never been considered to be used as the main power source for maritime applications. In this paper, novel component sizing, energy and power management approaches are proposed to enable the use of SOFCs as the main on-board power source for the first time in the literature and integrate them into the liquefied natural gas fueled Power and Propulsion System (PPS) of vessels. The proposed component sizing approach determines the power ratings of the on-board sources (SOFC, gas engine and battery) considering size and weight limits, while the energy and power management approaches guarantee an optimal power split between different power sources and PPS stability while looking after battery aging. The results indicate that the combined proposed optimization-based approaches can yield up to 53% CO2 reduction and 21% higher fuel utilization efficiency compared to conventional diesel-electric vessels.

Highlights

The stringent demands by the national and international authorities to reduce the environmental footprints of the shipping industry have pushed the industry towards the use and adoption of cleaner power sources as well as alternative fuels
The results show that the combination of the proposed schemes result in up to 32% CO2 emissions reduction if the engine room size and weight remains unchanged and if the engine room size and weight is increased by 70% a switch to a fully Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) powered Direct Current (DC)-Propulsion System (PPS) can happen which results in 53% CO2 emissions reduction compared to conventional diesel cases
A similar model is used for the SOFC converter, which only operates in the boost mode

Summary

Introduction

The stringent demands by the national and international authorities to reduce the environmental footprints of the shipping industry have pushed the industry towards the use and adoption of cleaner power sources as well as alternative fuels. The use of SOFCs (and pure gas engines) in vessels with fast load variations is challenging These energy sources are mostly pared with batteries in the maritime and automotive industry [3,4], where the SOFC is normally used for generating the so-called base load, that is the minimum required load during the operation, and the engine and the battery act as principal and auxiliary sources [5]. Due to this limitation and the lower power density of SOFCs in comparison to en gines, their share in the total installed power on-board is usually limited

Methods

Results

Conclusion