Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Fueled with Biogas in Malaysia: A Review of Potential

Abstract

The limitations of conventional energy resources have encouraged worldwide research on various types of energy in electricity generation. Fuel cell-based electricity generation creates a huge potential in the energy industry. This paper aimed to study the potential of biogas in Malaysia to be fed into the direct biogas solid oxide fuel cell (DB-SOFC) system. The data obtained from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), Energy Commission (ST) and Department of Statistics Malaysia were used in this study. The analysis showed that in 2019, Malaysia had the potential to generate biogas of about 877.53 million m3/year. The characterisations of the DB-SOFC system with a capacity of 200 kW from Bloom Energy were applied in this study. The result indicated that Malaysia’s potential to generate about 2006.9 MW of electricity from biogas solid oxide fuel cells was approximately 6% of the total electricity capacity in the country. When compared with the conventional biogas’ combined production of heat and power (CHP), the DB-SOFC gave 76.95% more performance in electricity generation. Therefore, this study finding provides a positive impact on the biomass industry in Malaysia. Extensive research and development (R&D) are needed in order to penetrate this fuel cell system into Malaysia’s energy industry landscape.

Potential of Biogas Utilization for Renewable Energy Mix Contribution and Rural Electrification in Sarawak

“…It is considered a simple waste to renewable energy technology because no pre-treatment is necessary, and only a favorable environment is needed for microorganisms to decompose the organic waste [2]. The produced biogas contains 55-65% of methane (CH4), 35-45% of carbon dioxide (CO2), and impurities; 0-1% hydrogen sulfide (H2S), 0-3% nitrogen (N2) [19,20,21,22]. Apart from that, biogas could also oxygen (O2) at concentrations of 0-1%, which may come from the influent substrate or leakages [23,24].…”

“…Biogas can burn with a calorific value of approximately 5340 kcal/m 3 at 15°C compared to 9000 kcal/m 3 of pure methane. Besides that, biogas can be further upgraded to increase methane purity up to 98% [22]. Methane has a higher global warming potential of 25 times higher than carbon dioxide in 100 years [25].…”

“…This enhances the feasibility of the SOFC utilisation for biogas conversion. Shafie et al [22] reported that biogas-based solid oxide fuel cells have the potential to generate approximately 2006.9 MW of electricity from the 877.53 million m 3 /year of POME. Conclusively, biogas fuel cell technology has the potential to replace conventional combustion in converting biogas to electricity.…”

Environmental Analysis of Power Generation from Pineapple Waste

“…Anaerobic digestion is used to create it rather than a geological process using fossil fuels. Because biogas contains methane and has enough energy to produce both heat and power, it can lessen reliance on fossil fuels and replace them [15]. About 55 to 70 percent of the biogas is methane, 30 to 45 percent is carbon dioxide, and the other trace gases include oxygen, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulphide.…”

Design And Fabrication of a Domestic Biogas Unit for Cooking Applications

“…Bio gas is generated through anaerobic digestion which is named as a biological process which converts biodegradable wastes into methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and gases in less percentage with the aid of microorganisms in the absence of oxygen [6,9,[14][15][16]. The composition of biogas is illustrated in Table 1 [6,9,14].…”