Safe and waste-free technologies using hydrogen electric power generation

Abstract

A task of the Arctic integrated development affects the development of the new safe and waste-free technologies of waste processing using hydrogen electric power generation. This problem is multifaceted and concerns both large port cities and small towns, mines, islands, platforms, mining and processing plants, etc., despite the fact that many of them have not removed the wastes from their previous activities. The presence of melting permafrost, especially in the Western part of the Russian Arctic, high logistics costs, a small number of indigenous people and mainly rotational method of development make use of new technologies for the production of electricity, heat, water treatment, which provide the use of hydrogen power on the basis of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The use of LNG as a fuel is not effective enough, especially in the Arctic, given the low efficiency of diesel and gas turbine power plants, as well as the environmental degradation from their use. A more effective, environmentally friendly and integrated solution is the use of hydrogen electric power generation together with hydrogen fuel cells (HFC).The structure and method of waste-free technologies of waste processing are analyzed. The structure of wastes is multifaceted and contains: the most common solid waste from industry and life, including natural and man-made landfills; liquid wastes including sewage sludge from household and rainwater, oil-containing and other industrial wastes; leachate from landfills, including landfill gases; wastes resulted from transportation and transshipment of oil products, etc.In the paper purification methods are described; industrial shipping equipment and its characteristics for the application at facilities of the Arctic are presented. These installations include: incinerators, installations for treatment and filtrate of sewage from municipal solid wastes (MSW), desalination plants of reverse osmosis, snow-and ice-melting installations, cleaning and filtration of flue gases with an emphasis on methods of electric cleaning, cargo arms for loading and unloading the oil products and hazardous wastes. The advantages of hydrogen sources and energy storage using LNG in the Arctic both in terms of energy efficiency and ecology, the possibility of their use in conjunction with the above waste treatment plants are shown.Characteristics of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and solid polymer fuel cells and their scope are presented. For the most dynamically developing solid oxide elements, their characteristics in the traditional and cogeneration cycles are given and the scope of their application in small and distributed energy at power up to 10 kW is shown. Atmospheric hybrid schemes for thermodynamic efficiency are significantly inferior to schemes under pressure, but in large-capacity plants, for example, with coal gasification, they can be quite promising. Modern SOFC work under pressure of 7–9 bar; with the growth of their capacity over 1–5 MW in hybrid power plants (HPPs) it is necessary to increase the pressure up to 11 bar and even more. For HPPs with capacity over 10 MW, cogeneration cycle with gas turbines (CCGT) is the most efficient. The highest electrical efficiency of HPPs with the capacity over 10 MW reaches 75% with the use of CCGT and boilers at three pressure units with intermediate superheating.The paper presents the characteristics of traditional sources of electricity based on ship and aircraft gas turbine units operating on LNG, which can be used in autonomous power supply networks of Arctic facilities. Their advantages in terms of specific power in comparison with diesel power plants and storage devices are shown, but high LNG consumption and environmental indicators limit their use in the Arctic, taking into account the logistics problems. Comparison of the energy efficiency of traditional sources and hydrogen storage shows significant advantages of the latter, and if the efficiency of traditional sources increases with their power, the efficiency of storage devices does not change in the entire range of capacities. This circumstance makes the use of hydrogen sources and accumulators uncontested in the field of small capacities typical for Arctic consumers, especially taking into account the possibilities for safe and waste-free technology for processing industrial and life wastes.