Abstract
Nowadays the research in energy field is focused on conversion technologies which could achieve higher efficiencies and lower environmental impact. Among these, fuel cells are considered an extremely promising technology and pressurized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems are particularly attractive for their high electric efficiency, potential for cogeneration applications, low carbon emissions and high performance at part-load. This paper aims to perform a robust design of an innovative turbocharged hybrid system model, featuring components validated with industrial data, where a turbocharger is used to pressurize the fuel cell, promising better cost effectiveness than a microturbine-based hybrid system, at small scales. This study will evaluate the impact of the main operating parameters (fuel cell area, stack current density and recuperator surface) on the plant performance, considering uncertainties in the system and creating a response surface of the model to perform the study. Finally, a study of the operating costs of such plant is performed to evaluate its profitability in the Italian market scenario.
Highlights
Engineering design of energy systems is performed mostly under deterministic conditions; it is widely demonstrated that the performance of such systems is highly affected by uncertainties related to mechanical and manufacturing parameters, limited knowledge of physics and numerical approximations introduced with models [1,2]
Fuel cells are considered an extremely promising technology and pressurized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems are attractive for their high electric efficiency, potential for cogeneration applications, low carbon emissions and high performance at part-load
This paper aims to perform a robust design of an innovative turbocharged hybrid system model, featuring components validated with industrial data, where a turbocharger is used to pressurize the fuel cell, promising better cost effectiveness than a microturbine-based hybrid system, at small scales
Summary
Engineering design of energy systems is performed mostly under deterministic conditions; it is widely demonstrated that the performance of such systems is highly affected by uncertainties related to mechanical and manufacturing parameters, limited knowledge of physics and numerical approximations introduced with models [1,2]. To perform an analysis under uncertainty of energy systems, a response surface representative of the model can be created, resulting in a polynomial which approximates the chosen responses of the model within the domain set. A hybrid system featuring a pressurized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack and a turbocharger is studied and represented through a response surface to evaluate the influence of some design choices on net power, net efficiency and economic parameters, considering uncertainties in some of the operating parameters of the system. High temperature fuel cell exhaust gases can be used to drive a bottoming thermodynamic cycle, raising the overall hybrid cycle efficiency to more than 70% [4], resulting in a interesting application for hybrid system integration [3,5]
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