Thermo‐Economic Modelling and Optimisation of Fuel Cell Systems

Abstract

This paper describes and illustrates the application of a methodology for thermo‐economic design and optimisation of fuel cell systems. This methodology combines the use of process simulation and process integration techniques to compute thermo‐economic performances of fuel cell systems that will be used in a multi‐objective optimisation framework. The method allows the generation of integrated fuel cell system configurations and their corresponding optimal operating conditions. It should be used as a preliminary design methodology, allowing the identification of promising system configurations, which would be further analysed. The methodology and the thermo‐economic models are described and demonstrated for the design of PEMFC hybrid systems, combining fuel cell and gas turbine technologies.

Thermochemical production of liquid fuels from biomass: Thermo-economic modeling, process design and process integration analysis

“…The sizing and cost estimation method for shell and tube reactors with catalysts reported in (Maréchal et al, 2005) is applied for the reforming reactor with a Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst and for the WGS reactor with a P d/Al 2 O 3 catalyst. The distillation column costs are estimated by design heuristics for packed towers (Ulrich and Vasudevan, 2003) based on the number of plates and the Murphree efficiency.…”

“…The purpose of the present work is to develop models that allow one to analyze technological alternatives for the thermochemical conversion of biomass into different types of liquid fuels, mainly Fischer-Tropsch crude fuel, dimethyl ether and methanol and by applying a systematic methodology comprising the definition of a process superstructure, the use of process integration techniques and economic analysis considering specific process designs (Maréchal et al, 2005). This methodology is appropriate for the conceptual process design that identifies the promising system configurations.…”

H2 processes with CO2 mitigation: Thermo-economic modeling and process integration

“…Figure 3 presents the process blockflow diagram and Tables 2&3 summarize the modeling assumptions and nominal operating conditions considered in this study. The process models are established with flowsheeting software using literature data [18,9,7,26,22]. The reforming reactor is modeled as an isothermal reactor following the approach described in [22].…”

Combined mass and energy integration in process design at the example of membrane-based gas separation systems

“…Multi-objective optimisation techniques have been introduced in the conceptual design of energy conversion systems in order to provide an enlarged set of candidate solutions to a design problem that is characterised by several conflictive objectives such as efficiency, cost and environmental impact (see, for example Toffolo and Lazzaretto (2002); Lazzaretto and Toffolo (2004); Li et al (2006) and Sayyaadi (2009) for CHP plants, Maréchal et al (2005) and Autissier et al (2007) for fuel cells and Brown et al (2009) for internal gasification combined cycles). Due to their ability of handling non-linear and noncontinuous objective functions, evolutionary algorithms have thereby proven as a robust method for solving such complex programming problems.…”