Integration of wind turbine with biomass-fueled SOFC to provide hydrogen-rich fuel: Economic and CO₂ emission reduction assessment

Addressing the energy crisis and global warming issues would entail urgent development of efficient and environmentally-benign power generation systems to mitigate the future clean energy policies. The biomass-driven SOFC systems are considered in this regard as pioneer technologies to supply clean power, particularly for decentralized applications. However, enough biomass availability and supply is a main challenge to run these systems. In current research to reduce biomass consumption, the biomass-driven SOFC is hybridized with wind turbines to produce pure hydrogen via a PEM electrolyzer. Produced hydrogen is added to the anode of SOFC to enrich the hydrogen content of the synthesis gas fuel. Feasibility assessment of proposed hybrid SOFC/wind turbine structure is examined considering first and second laws. Then, comprehensive economic and environmental appraisals are considered to inspect trade-offs between increased costs (associated with wind turbine and electrolyzer) and increased power as well as decreased CO₂ emission. Finally to determine the optimal conditions for proposed system operation, triple-objective optimization via genetic algorithm is implemented. Obtained results have revealed exergy efficiency enhancement by 7.3% and CO₂ emission reduction by 13.0 %, via incorporation of wind turbine. These technical and environmental performance enhancements are achieved at the expense of around 6.4 % increase in unit electricity cost, due to the increment of capital expenditures associated with the wind turbine and water electrolyzer. From parametric analysis, it is found that, the proposed framework yields lower electricity price and CO₂ emission under higher cell temperatures and lower fuel utilization factors.