Thermo-environmental and economic comparison of three different arrangements of solid oxide fuel cell-gas turbine (SOFC-GT) hybrid systems

Abstract A comparative analysis is performed for three different layouts of SOFC-GT hybrid systems with internal reformer from the viewpoints of energy, exergy, environmental and economic. The three considered designs are distinguished by number of SOFC stack, as single SOFC stack is employed in one system, while two SOFC stacks (cell numbers halved) are used for the other designs. For the second system, two stacks are fed by fuel and air in parallel way; however, in the third case, two stacks are fed by fuel in parallel and air serially. A mathematical model is developed in EES software to simulate the performance of the cycles through a parametric study. In addition, exergy destruction rate of components of the plants are achieved to recognize the main sources of ireversibilities. The analyses demonstrated that two-stack SOFC-GT series type is more efficient, leading energy and exergy efficiencies to reach 63.22% and 60.81% correspondingly, which are about 20.3% and 8.89% higher than conventional SOFC-GT and parallel type, respectively. The highest source of exergy destruction amongst all system components belongs to after burner. Furthermore, it is observed that the highest total cost, 24.95 $/h, is attributed to conventional SOFC-GT hybrid system while the least amount corresponds to SOFC-GT series type, 18.5 $/h. The CO 2 gas emission obtained for two-stack SOFC-GT hybrid system series type, 313.3 kg/MWh, obtained to be the lowest.