Study on a zero CO2 emission SOFC hybrid power system integrated with OTM using CO2 as sweep gas

A new zero CO2 emission solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) hybrid power system integrated with the oxygen ion transport membrane using CO2 as sweep gas is proposed in this paper. The pure oxygen is picked up from the cathode outlet gas by the oxygen ion transport membrane with CO2 as sweep gas; the oxy-fuel combustion mode in the afterburner of SOFC is employed. Because the combustion product gas only consists of CO2 and steam, CO2 is easily captured with lower energy consumption by the condensation of steam. With the aspen plus soft, this paper builds the simulation model of the overall SOFC hybrids system with CO2 capture. The exergy loss distributions of the overall system are analyzed, and the effects of the key operation parameters on the overall system performance are also investigated. The research results show that the new system still has a high efficiency after CO2 recovery. The efficiency of the new system is around 65.03%, only 1.25 percentage points lower than that of the traditional SOFC hybrid power system(66.28%)without CO2 capture. The research achievements from this paper will provide the valuable reference for further study on zero CO2 emission SOFC hybrid power system with higher efficiency. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.