Engineering and Economic Analyses of a Coal-Fueled Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Hybrid Power Plant

Abstract

An advanced coal based power plant system that has an electrical efficiency of 60% on an HHV basis is defined. The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) hybrid has been shown to be an essential requirement in order to achieve such a high efficiency. The coal is gasified utilizing a high pressure air-blown advanced transport reactor (ATR). A thermo-economic analysis of this integrated gasification fuel cell (IGFC) plant is performed by comparing it to an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant that utilizes a gas turbine combined cycle for power generation. Results of this thermo-economic analysis indicate that the required “break even” cost of the SOFC system is $400/kW on an installed cost basis such that the cost of electricity of IGFC plant is the same as that of the IGCC plant. Coproduction of H2 and capture of carbon emissions may be incorporated in the design without causing a major thermal penalty on the system performance when high temperature separation membranes are employed. An O2-blown gasifier is required for such applications. The technology development needs are addressed.

Design of highly efficient coal-based integrated gasification fuel cell power plants

“…The efficiency targets were first set to be 60% (HHV basis) for coal-fueled plants producing electricity only without CO 2 capture [14]. Under the sponsorship of the U.S. DOE/National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), the Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) of the University of California, Irvine investigated a series of IGFC system configurations featuring different production and emission control characteristics [15]:…”

“…It has been shown that high-temperature gas cleaning is more beneficial to the system's efficiency [3,15,17] but these technologies as pointed out previously are considered highly developmental for SOFC applications. In this work, conventional low-temperature gas cleaning technologies consisting of water scrubbing for removal of alkalis, halides and ammonia, activated carbon bed for removal of Hg and other volatile metals and Selexol TM process followed by ZnO guard bed for removal of sulfur compounds are employed due to their proven status.…”

“…This efficiency goal as set by the DOE is to account for any penalty associated with CO 2 separation but not that due to its compression to the sequestration pressure. Previous conceptual analyses of such IGFC plants have clearly shown the potential for improved efficiency and emissions relative to other system approaches [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], yet none of the research work published to date have demonstrated this performance goal, mostly due to the fact that even with highly efficient SOFC as the power block, CO 2 separation and the gasification process posed significant efficiency penalties on the system. Besides, integration of an SOFC power block with a gasification system is very different from the integration of gas turbine and steam turbine power blocks that are typical of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant due to the unique operating and control features of SOFC stacks.…”

Sensitivity analysis of a Vision 21 coal based zero emission power plant

“…Under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)/National Energy Technology Laboratory (N.E.T.L), the Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) of the University of California, Irvine, is defining the system engineering issues associated with the integration of key components and subsystems into power plant systems that meet performance and emission goals of the FutureGen program [1,2]. The design analysis of an advanced FutureGen plant that consists of coal gasification to generate a clean syngas to fuel a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)/gas turbine combined cycle hybrid is presented.…”

Application of a detailed dimensional solid oxide fuel cell model in integrated gasification fuel cell system design and analysis

“…Conceptual design and analyses of the integration of coal gasifiers with high temperature fuel cells have attracted much research interest around the world since the early 1990s and the results have clearly shown the potential of such systems for superior efficiency and emissions compared to other system approaches, including integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) systems [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Recently, IGFC systems that take advantage of more efficient catalytic gasifiers and the cooling caused by direct internal reforming (DIR) of CH 4 to reduce parasitic air compression load, have been proposed [11,12] and the electrical efficiency of such systems have been estimated to exceed or approach the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) performance goal for next generation coal-based power plants: producing electricity at 60% efficiency (coal HHV basis) while capturing more than 90% of the inlet fuel carbon in a pure CO 2 stream [13].…”