Exergy, Economic, and Environmental Analysis of a PEM Fuel Cell Power System to Meet Electrical and Thermal Energy Needs of Residential Buildings

Abstract

In this paper, a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell power system including burner, steam reformer, heat exchanger, and water heater has been considered. A PEM fuel cell system is designed to meet the electrical, domestic hot water, heating, and cooling loads of a residential building located in Tehran. Operating conditions of the system with consideration of the electricity cost has been studied. The cost includes social cost of the environmental pollutants (e.g. CO2, CO and NO). The results show that the maximum energy needs of the building can be met by 12 fuel cell stacks with nominal capacity of 8.5 kW. Annual average electricity cost of thissystem is equal to 0.39 US$/kWh and entropy generation of this system through a year is equal to 1004.54 GJ/K1. It is also concluded that increase in ambient temperature from 1 °C to 40 °C increases the entropy generation by 5.73%, carbon monoxide by 14.56%, and nitrogen monoxide by 8.9%, but decreases carbon dioxide by 0.47%.

An Intelligent Prediction of Self-produced Energy

“…Sustainability of solar and biomass cogeneration technologies are also emhasized (Buoro et al 2012;Bettocchi et al 2009;Bohorquez et al 2012). Ashar et al (2012) apply a case study using the criteria in literature to state that urban energy demand can be met fuel cell cogeneration facilities which also contributes to reduce overall greenhouse effects of environment.…”

“…Pre-used electricity cost Aralavagan et al (1995) and Cardona et al (2012) 9 Unit cost of electricity Aralavagan et al (1995), Kralj and Glavic (2009) Bloemhof- Ruwaard et al (1996), Mancarella and Chicco (2008), Wang et al (2011), Hong et al (2011), Cakir et al (2012 and Ashar et al (2012) …”

Optimization of Micro Gas Turbine by Economic, Exergy and Environment Analysis Using Genetic, Bee Colony and Searching Algorithms

“…With attention to high cost of energy and decreasing fossil fuel sources, attentions are attracted to optimal usage of energy and controlling it's consumption through higher efficiency systems or new technologies. Studies in this regard, have been started long time ego in industrial countries and first steps are taken in developing countries [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Considering changes of structure of power generation, privatisation and also importance of environmental issues, technology of power generation is led to local generations.…”

Optimization of a New Configuration of Power Tri-Generation Cycle by the Use of a Multi-Purpose Genetic Algorithm

“…Several papers have been investigated about the exergy, economic and environment analysis of gas turbine power plant, various methods of gas turbine cycle inlet air cooler, dispersed power generation systems have been published by the author of this paper [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. A. Abbassi and M. Aliehyaei in 2004 investigated Exergy method of optimization of a wavy plate indirect evaporative cooler they understated although the exery analysis has high efficiency for thermal systems at a high temperature difference , nevertheless the present result show that this method may also be applied for systems with high fraction pressure loss and low temperature difference by this method can increase energy efficiency by up to 65% [32].…”