Considerations regarding modeling of MW-scale IG-SOFC Hybrid Power System

RES Master´s Thesis Verkefnið er unnið í tengslum við Háskóla Íslands og Háskólann á AkureyriThe main objective of this thesis is to evaluate various modeling approaches for large systems employing high temperature fuel cell (particularly SOFC) modeling. It also includes a brief discussion of current trends and various designs. This thesis will review recently published papers investigating the hundred MWe scale SOFC hybrid Brayton-Rankine power systems. It goes into details discussing the crucial parameters influencing the cycle’s operation and performance. For better understanding, the basics of the fuel cell operation, involved processes and all phenonena are provided in Chapter 2. In the next chapter the SOFC based systems with integrated gasification reactors are widely described. Current state-of-the-art trends and their background are presented. Finaly the desired system configuration is proposed and investigated. These particular arragements correspond to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) baseline for systems employing high temperature fuel cells, hence certain design solutions are involved. The SOFC stack feedstock is provided by the gasification of coal, however different fuel can also be gasified (biomass for example). In the last chapter, the modeling and optimisation in the software are extensively described. Because of the fact that ASPEN Plus and Hysys are comonly used in the majority of cases when cycles involing high temperature fuel cells are analyzed, the attention will be focused on these two programs. Both of them have built-in tools allowing the modeling of heat exchangers, compressors and expanders (i.e. gas and steam turbines) by available units. ASPEN Plus is Fortran based software and the SOFC stack can be modeled as a user unit using this programming code. The modeling approach to the electrochemical and chemical processes within the SOFC stack will be delivered, since it is important for the modeling of the entire power cycle. Analysis of the whole system with the proposed tools allows the determination of the overall system thermal efficiency with high fidelity, thus the biggest effort must be made to correctly determine all input parameters and define the proper assumptions as well as simplifications. The final discussion emphasises the most crucial parameters. The proposed system represents a clean energy source, which substantialy reduces the polutants flow associated with the power generation. Desulphurisation and gases clean-up processes are also involved in the cycle, therefore it meets all environmental requirements