Renewable Energy, Vol.156, 986-1007, 2020
4E analyses of an innovative polygeneration system based on SOFC
An innovative multigeneration plant driven by a solid oxide fuel cell unit is regarded in this meticulous examination. The plausibility of the expressed plant is substantiated with regarding economic, thermodynamic and environmental concepts as the utmost efficacious equipment for operating evaluation of the thermal systems. An ejector refrigeration system beside a PEM electrolyzer are employed for cooling and hydrogen production. Furthermore, a heat recovery heat exchanger is employed for heating purposes. All subsystems are cautiously investigated and validated considering the reliable reports. The findings portrayed that the introduced multigeneration system can generate cooling load, heating capacity, net output power, and H-21 rate of 84.421kW, 2771kW, 184.21kW, and 1.4331kg/h, respectively. In this occasion, the first-law efficiency, exergetic efficiency, product overall cost, and environmental penalty cost are calculated 79.57%, 33.92%, 897.7 $/GJ, and 0.3527 $/h, respectively. Also, among all constituents, the superior portion of exergy destruction attributed to the solid oxide fuel cell module by 783.31kW, approximately 35.6% of the overall exergy destruction rate. Meantime, a thoroughgoing parametric evaluation of the set-up is established and it is illustrated that the suggested multigeneration plant's exergetic efficiency can be maximized according to the inlet temperature of the solid oxide fuel cell unit, compression ratio, and solid oxide fuel cell current density. Moreover, the product cost rate of the plant can be minimized with ejector motive fluid pressure, solid oxide fuel cell inlet temperature, and gas turbine outlet pressure. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.