Abstract
Unlike a general commercial building, heating for a building with an indoor swimming pool is highly energy-intensive due to the high energy demand for swimming water heating. In Korea, the conventional heating method for this kind of building is to use boilers and heat storage tanks that have high fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, a combined heat and power (CHP) system for such a building using the electricity and waste heat from a Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell (PAFC) system was designed and analyzed in terms of its primary energy saving, CO2 reduction, fuel cell and CHP efficiency, and economic feasibility. The mathematical model of the thermal load evaluation was used with the 3D multi-zone building model in TRNSYS 18 software (Thermal Energy System Specialists, LLC, Madison, MI, USA) to determine the space heating demand and swimming pool heat losses. The energy efficiency of the fuel cell unit was evaluated as a function of the part-load ratio from the operating data. The fundamental components, such as the auxiliary boiler, thermal storage tank, and heat exchanger are also integrated for the simulation of the system’s operation. The result shows that the system has a high potential to improve the utilization efficiency of fuel cell energy production. Referring to the local condition of the energy market in Korea, an economic analysis was also carried out by using a specific FC-CHP capacity at 440 kW. The economic benefit is significant in comparison with a conventional heating system, especially for the full-time operating (FTO) mode. The net profit made by comparison with the conventional energy supply system is about 178,352 to 273,879 USD per year, and the payback period is expected to be 6.9 to 10.7 years under different market conditions.
Highlights
The main motivations to seek more clean and efficient methods of energy production are the increasing cost of fuel and the need for the reduction of CO2 and harmful emissions [1]
The economic and environmental potential of a combined heat and power (CHP) system based on a 400 kW scale Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell (PAFC) was introduced by a simulation-based analysis under two different operation strategies, and the results indicated that the electrical load following (ELF) model would be the advisable operation mode for this CHP system in the residential sector [21]
The dynamic simulation of the energy supply system based on the investigated fuel cell performance data, the electrical load of a reference commercial building, and the evaluated thermal load was carried out for the cases with the electrical load tracking (ELT) and full-time operating (FTO) operating model
Summary
The main motivations to seek more clean and efficient methods of energy production are the increasing cost of fuel and the need for the reduction of CO2 and harmful emissions [1]. A combined heat and power (CHP) system has many benefits when it is used to provide electrical and thermal energy for commercial buildings, such as increasing power reliability; the reduction of primary energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and costs; and the improvement of power quality [2]. In the CHP part, the interest in the improvements of the primary generator over a typical thermal engine to new is growing more, especially in Japan, and more recently in Europe [5] Comparing with those other CHP technologies, such as Stirling engines or gas turbines, fuel cells—as an electrochemical generator—can achieve substantially higher efficiencies and potentially compete even the most energy-efficient large-scale power plants in terms of electric efficiencies [6,7], due to their wide range of capacities which can be well matched with the energy demand, thereby increasing the energy utilization
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