Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Investigation of energy efficiency of an SOFC integrated with ethanol reformer using lumped models
Submission Author:
Rafael de Camargo Catapan , SC , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Igor Silva Flôres Siqueira, Bruno Oechsler, Rafael de Camargo Catapan
Presenter: Igor Silva Flôres Siqueira
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-0792
Abstract
The growing demand for energy production and concerns about the environmental impact caused by traditional energy sources have driven research into new and highly efficient strategies in the transportation sector. Most vehicles around the world use fossil fuels, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. This scenario motivates the research into more efficient methods. In this work, the impact of reutilization of the heat generated by the system to improve the efficiency of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) integrated with an ethanol reformer was investigated employing lumped models. The integration based on reusing the heat rate released by the exothermic reaction in the fuel cell is compared with a system without heat recovery. The key parameter in the study is the efficiency analysis, performed through lumped and stationary models with emphasis on system behavior representation of SOFC, reformer and heat exchangers. The results were compared with the literature and experimental data in order to be validated. The preliminary results show that the hypotheses adopted in the models for this study are valid to estimate the main characteristics such as voltage, total losses, power and efficiency of the fuel cell at different temperatures (873 K to 1073 K). The results were compared with the experimental data and show a good agreement for voltage at 1073 K and a slight discrepancy for 873 K. The system model is able to estimate the efficiency, which confirms the hypothesis of implementing a lumped model to represent the system of interest.
Keywords
SOFC, Reformer, ethanol, lumped models, system integration, Energy Recovery
