Performance analysis of internally reformed MCFC/IT-SOFC combined cycle

Abstract

Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 30 June - 2 July, 2008.

High temperature fuel cells such as the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) are considered extremely suitable for electrical power plant application. The intermediate temperature (IT) SOFC and MCFC performances are calculated using numerical models which are built in Aspen customer modeler for the internally reformed (IR) fuel cells. These models are integrated in Aspen PlusTM. In this article, a new combined cycle is proposed: this combined cycle consisting of two-staged of MCFC and IT-SOFC. The MCFC&IT-SOFC combined cycle and single-staged cycle with MCFC only are simulated in order to evaluate and compare their performances. The simulations results indicate that the net efficiency of MCFC&IT-SOFC combined cycle is 64.6 % under standard operation conditions. On the other hand, the net efficiency of single-staged MCC cycle is 51.6%. In other words, the cycle with two-staged MCFC and IT-SOFC gives much better net efficiency than the cycle with single-staged MCFC.