Principle Demonstration of Fuel Cell System with CO2 Capture
Authors: Akabane Shunnosuke , Dohkoh Tatsuki , Tsuji Marie , Nakajima Tatsuya , Kawabata Yasuharu , Ide Takahiro , Nakamura Kazuo , Hatae Toru 
Published: July 2021

Recently, the desire of decarbonization is increasing on the part of the general public worldwide as many companies take part in RE100 initiative. Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. declared to reduce 10 million tons carbon dioxide emission by 2030 in “Compass 2030” which is company vision of Tokyo Gas group in November 27th, 2019. We drive CO2 net-zero including emission from customer and lead the transition to a decarbonized society. To achieve CO2 net-zero, we will take two actions. The first one is expansion of use of renewable energy. Second is development of decarbonization technologies for gaseous energy, which include effective use of natural gas, use of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).

Fuel cell system is expected to use natural gas effectively. In Japan, residential fuel cell system has already installed extensively since the first model was sold in 2009. Tokyo Gas have also studied fuel cell technologies for over three decades. These days, we developed and reported mono generation system which had AC-power generation efficiency of over 65.0%LHV and output of 5kW. In this system, anode lines of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stacks are connected in series. A fuel regenerator is placed between two-stage SOFC stacks, which remove H2O from the anode off-gas of first-stage SOFC stack. Then, the regenerated anode off-gas is used as a fuel of the second-stage SOFC stack. Hence, this system can be operated at high total fuel utilization (Uf) value of over 90% and enable each SOFC stack to be operated at safe Uf condition for each, simultaneously. We could make easy flow system by using condenser as fuel regenerator.

This system can reduce much CO2 than existing power resource because of its higher efficiency, but still exhausts some amount of CO2 gas. To achieve decarbonized society, further reduction of CO2 emission for fuel cell system will be required. Therefore, we focused on CO2 separation membrane as a fuel regenerator which has high selectivity for both H2O and CO2.

In previous work, we performed DC-power generation of 75.5%LHV by connecting membrane module as the fuel regenerator of the two-stage SOFC system. CO2 recovery rate from membrane reached to about 40%. To improve the CO2 recovery rate, we invent the new system as figure 1.

The new system recycles regenerated anode off-gas which was removed H2O and CO2 by CO2 separation membrane. The membrane has high selectivity of H2O and CO2. In addition, a separation at the membrane was driven on the differential pressure by decompressing without sweep gas. As a result, high concentration of CO2 was recovered. In ideal situation, the new system will be operated under Uf of 100% and recovered CO2 of 100%.

In this study, we demonstrated this system as shown in figure 1. Membrane was put in fuel cell module. It was operated at a total Uf of 97.1%, and power generation efficiency reached DC 77.3%LHV at power output of 5.65 kW under the thermal self-sustainable condition without the electric heater. Assuming the efficiencies of the auxiliary machines and the power conditioner to be respectively 94% and 95%, the estimated AC-power generation efficiency of the hot module was 69.0%LHV and CO2 emission factor reached to 294 g-CO2/kWh. At the same time, CO2 recovery rate was 85%. We achieved high efficiency and low in this system. In the future, we have to discuss about the use of recovery CO2.

Figure 1