A Novel Design of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell-Based Combined Cooling, Heat and Power Residential System in the U.K.

Abstract

This paper details the use of objective sizing techniques for a novel design of a residential solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) combined cooling, heat and electrical power (CCHP) for UK market. The aim of the research is to determine the objective sizing of parameters taking into account the aspects of efficiency, economic and environmental impacts by the entropyweighting approach and grey relationship analysis. The combination of these two approaches helps designers objectively maximise efficiency of energy utilization and minimise emissions and costs of the system that is examined. It is envisaged that electrical demand is met by the fuel cell stacks while the most efficient use is made of heat that is generated by the fuel cell through waste heat recovery to satisfy domestic hot water, freezers, space heating and space cooling. The demand of conventional electric freezers is innovatively designed to be fulfilled by heat exchangers and absorption chillers to further increase the efficiency of heat use. Due to the particularity of the energy demand of the domestic sector in the UK, the proposed system structure, sizing values and control strategiessupported by MATLAB R2018a/Simulink-are suited to the residential energy demands of a single household.

Optimised MOPSO with the grey relationship analysis for the multi-criteria objective energy dispatch of a novel SOFC-solar hybrid CCHP residential system in the UK

“…• Based on the authors' previous objective techniques for sizing values [15], the effectiveness of the counter-flow heat exchangers 1 through 4 are taken to be 0.6, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.7 for the air-preheating, the freezer, the domestic hot water and the space heating demands in Fig. 3.…”

“…3. The number of SOFC cells is 71 and the operating temperature of the SOFC is 1273 K [15]. The coefficient of performance (COP) of the absorption chiller is taken to be 0.8.…”

“…The fuel cross-over and internal current losses are significant for low-temperature FCs but are neglected for devices that operate at high temperature [30]. As the main focus of the energy balance and efficiency study is the external characteristics of various system components, the detail of the internal characteristics of voltage losses and current density are not reflected in the modelling description but have been explained and validated in the authors' previous work [15].…”

“…Level 3: Sizing problems and operation strategies are two key research interests for multi-objective problems in this field. The authors' previous work in [15] [16] detailed the sizing problems for a SOFC-based CCHP system. Operation strategies can be categorised into two types, namely rule-based and optimisation-based.…”

Optimal Estimation of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells Parameter Based on Coyote Optimization Algorithm

“…As a result, this hydrogen can be used in PEMFC power plants that operate at partial loading conditions, and so they can yield an important quick load cover in power systems, besides other renewable energy sources [9][10][11][12]. In this regard, fuel cell units are considered as electrochemical energy conversion devices in AC and DC power networks [13,14]. These units can convert chemical energy to electrical energy besides heat while they use oxygen and hydrogen as fuel.…”