A kinetic model-based SOFC combined cycle power generation system for waste heat recovery

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an extremely promising technology for sustainable energy conversion and storage through highly efficient electrochemical reaction at high-temperature conditions. The existing studies commonly address the final equilibrium state of the SOFC electrode reactions, giving less consideration to the micro kinetic of electrode reactions. In this paper, a kinetic model-based SOFC combined cycle power generation system is suggested to recover multiple waste heat, which includes a Kalina cycle (KC) as the bottom cycle and a Rankine cycle (RC) as the top cycle. In devneloping the proposed system, a novel kinetic model is presented for SOFC based on the microscopic mechanism of the oxygen reduction. A dynamic stochastic programming model is established to optimize the integrated system sequentially and simultaneously, with maximum power generation taken as the objective, depending on whether the SOFC system and the KC-RC system are simultaneously optimized. In sequential optimization, the output power of SOFC-KC-RC system is 320.56 kW and it is 415.04 kW using simultaneous optimization, achieving a 29.5% increase in power generation. Further comparison with the previous reports obtained by a thermodynamic model, this work leads to a 10.8% increase in power generation, showing the promising power production performance of the developed system.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

solid oxide fuel cell / kinetic model / plug flow reactor / waste heat recovery

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 22008023, and 22178045) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. DUT21RC(3)109).

Competing interests

The authors declared that they have no competing interests.

Nomenclature

Notations in formulation
Dϕ	effective diffusivity
i	current density
L	length
n	molar flow rate
P	pressure/percolation probability
Q	vaporizing fraction
QSOA	heat load of hot streams
QSIA	heat load of cold streams
s	surface area
Sϕ	net source term
T	temperature
VC	produced cell voltage
Vcon	concentration overvoltage
Vloss	voltage loss
Vohm	ohmic overvoltage
Vact	activation loss
VR	ideal reversible voltage
Wstack	net power generation
ΔT	minimum heat transfer approach temperature
ε	volume fraction
ϕ	species concentration
Subscript
i	hot streams
j	cold streams
Superscript
in	inlet
out	outlet
p	pinch candidate

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