The rapid growth increases the threat of global climate change. Biomass is a potential alternative to fossil fuel due to environmentally friendly fuel source. Therefore, power generation from biomass gasification integrated with fuel cell system is studied in this work. The objectives are to determine the amount of biomass feed needed to produce power output of 50 kW and the optimal operating conditions of both gasification process and proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The power output of the system is targeted in order to determine the amount of hydrogen required for the PEM fuel cell. The operating conditions of PEM fuel cell are varied in terms of temperature, pressure, and relative humidity (RH). The amount of hydrogen is used to determine the amount of feed required via the biomass gasification modeled by the Aspen plus programs. The parameters that are studied include gasifier temperature, air to biomass ratio, and steam to biomass ratio. The results shown that optimal operating conditions of PEM fuel cell (50 kW) are 120C, 3 atm and 100%RH and the hydrogen required is 2.320 kg/hr, whereas the optimal operating conditions of biomass gasification are 800C gasifier temperature, 2.0 air to biomass ratio, and 2.0 steam to biomass ratio with biomass feed of 27.641 kg/hr.

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In this work, an integrated system of biogas tri-reforming and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) for power generation was studied by using Aspen Plus simulation. Biogas obtained from a sugar industry with 75%CH4 and 25%CO2 was used as feedstock. However, biogas-feed SOFC power generation system released carbon dioxide (CO2) which was the main cause of global warming. Therefore, solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) was considered for CO2 reduction called reversible solid oxide fuel cell (RSOFC). The RSOFC system included four units; tri-reforming, SOFC, SOEC and methanation. This research aimed to optimize operating conditions of the RSOFC system for generating maximum electricity and reducing CO2. The results of biogas tri-reforming with SOFC system showed that the electrical power production was 6233 W/m2 and CO2 emission was 1603 kg/hr. The results of RSOFC system indicated that CO2 emission was reduced by 24.7%.

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