Storing renewable energies in a substitute of natural gas

Abstract

This paper proposes a way to obtain valuable electric power and valuable fuel starting from renewable variable electric power plus biomass and/or waste products.Biomass/biofuel can be oxyburned using electrolytic oxygen to generate electric power. Gas turbines or internal combustion engines are suitable to such a task, but there is the problem of very high temperatures connected to oxycombustion. In the case of gas turbine the inlet temperature could be controlled by adding steam and/or carbon dioxide, while in the case of internal combustion engines only carbon dioxide could be used. In such a way the exhaust gas continues to be formed by carbon dioxide and steam which can be easily separated by condensation. Carbon dioxide is fed to a Sabatier process together with electrolytic hydrogen to generate a gas with characteristics similar to natural gas.Although electrolytic hydrogen could be used directly both in internal combustion engines and fuel cells, significant problems to hydrogen distribution and on-board storing still exists. Therefore the substitute of natural gas could be a real bridge solution for the short/medium term. A simulation has been carried out and the resulting efficiencies range from 0.52 to 0.58.