Comparative Study of Thermodynamic Performance and System Characteristics of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System with Three Different Fuels
Authors: Jeong Kwangnam , Lee Jiyong , Hong Jongsup 
Published: September 2023

The global demand for hydrogen is increasing as the global warming problem emerges. Hydrogen, which does not produce air pollutants, is attracting attention in various fields such as transportation and power generation. However, there are drawbacks in storing and transporting hydrogen in its own form. Hydrogen must be stored in the form of low-temperature and high-pressure liquefied hydrogen, which requires a lot of energy, and transportation costs are also high due to the low mass energy density of hydrogen. Therefore, there is a need to store and transport hydrogen in different forms, and a means to convert and use these different forms of hydrogen is needed.

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is one of the energy conversion devices capable of using various types of hydrogen with high efficiency. Due to the high operating temperature of SOFC, fuel can receive adequate heat for reforming process from high temperature SOFC exhaust gas. Therefore, SOFC can use various types of fuels, such as methane and ammonia.

Due to the fuel flexibility of SOFC, many SOFC system study using various fuels have been conducted. However, the SOFC operating conditions and system layout used in each study are all different. Also, most of studies lacked parasitic power consideration due to the pressure drop in system components. These limitations make it difficult to compare each SOFC system and find out effect of fuel on SOFC system.

In this study, a quantitative comparison of SOFC using three different fuels, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, was conducted. Thermodynamic models of a SOFC stack and balance of plant components developed from the previous study are used for the system simulations. Two system layouts, non-recirculation, and anode recirculation were chosen, and thermodynamic feasibility test was conducted based on T-Q diagram analysis at heat exchanger and reformer. With these system layouts, thermodynamic performance of the system and the design characteristics of the system components were compared. Boundary conditions, such as SOFC operating temperature, air and fuel utilization remains the same to compare each system result quantitatively. Also, most of design variables of system components are fixed to find out the effect of fuel on system components.

Among three non-recirculation systems, ammonia fed non-recirculation system showed the highest electrical efficiency, while methane fed anode recirculation system showed the highest electrical efficiency among the anode recirculation systems. With the anode recirculation, SOFC power drop occurs due to the lower hydrogen concentration in the SOFC. However, fuel input drop due to anode recirculation is greater than the SOFC power drop, which positively affects system performance. But parasitic power is also increased due to recycle blower and higher mass flow rate of anode recirculation flow. In the case of ammonia fueled system, this increase in parasitic power leads to decrease in electrical efficiency.

In this study, there are many constraints in operating conditions and BoPs designs to compare each system with different fuel. Therefore, operating conditions and BoPs designs are not optimized, so each system performance for each fuel may increase with appropriate system design. This optimization will be done in further study.

Figure 1