APPLICATION AND ANALYSIS OF SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELLS IN SHIP ENERGY SYSTEMS

This study identifies and analyses the overall energy consumption required for converting LNG (liquefied natural gas) from liquid to gaseous state in high pressure vaporizers at various cargo discharge rates on a liquid natural gas regasification vessel (LNGRV). The actual measured data were collected on an available vessel, to calculate the overall energy consumption of converting natural gas from liquid to gaseous state by three built-in turbo generators. Next, the study considers their replacement with the newest innovative technology including three solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power plants of the same power. This paper provides a simplified analysis of the proposed implementation of the SOFC power plant which was performed for the first time in the existing literature. The results show a significant increase in the achievable electrical efficiency of 40.6%, with respect to 32.9% of a system with turbo generators. The research has also shown that waste heat from the SOFCs can be used to produce thermal energy, resulting in further savings of 2.6% in natural gas consumption. Future research could be done on other regasification terminals in the world, which use different main propulsion technology, using an open, closed or combined cycle during the regasification operations