Techno-economic assessment of biogas-fed solid oxide fuel cell combined heat and power system at industrial scale

File(s)

DEMOSOFCPaperDraft4.pdf (1.51 MB)

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Author(s)

Giarola, S

Forte, O

Lanzini, A

Gandiglio, M

Santarelli, M

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Type

Journal Article

Abstract

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are currently very energy and greenhouse gas intensive processes. An important opportunity to reduce both of these quantities is via the use of biogas produced within the treatment process to generate energy. This paper studies the optimal energy and economic performance of a wastewater treatment facility fitted with a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) based combined heat and power (CHP) plant. An optimisation framework is formulated and then applied to determine cost, energy and emissions performance of the retrofitted system when compared with conventional alternatives.

Results show that present-day capital costs of SOFC technology mean that it does not quite compete with the conventional alternatives. But, it could become interesting if implemented in thermally-optimised WWTP systems. This would increase the SOFC manufacturing volumes and drive a reduction of capital and fixed operating costs.

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Date Issued

2018-02-01

Date Acceptance

2017-11-03

Citation

Applied Energy, 2018, 211, pp.689-704

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/53104

DOI

https://www.dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.11.029

ISSN

0306-2619

Publisher

Elsevier

Start Page

689

End Page

704

Journal / Book Title

Applied Energy

Volume

211

Copyright Statement

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Sponsor

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

Grant Number

NE/N018656/1

Subjects

09 Engineering

14 Economics

Energy

Publication Status

Published

Date Publish Online

2017-11-24