Exergy and Energy Analysis of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Fuelled Using Methanol, Propane and Butane.

Abstract

Exergy and Energy analysis used the principle of conservation of mass and energy, in connection with thermodynamics law in designing and analysing of thermal system This Paper focus on Energy and Exergy analysis of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) system by computer simulation. A comprehensive effect of Energy and Exergy analysis on SOFC using Methanol, Propane, and Butane fuel system with the aid of Thermolib simulation toolbox was investigated. From the configurations simulated for the three different fuel sources, the data produced were used for thermodynamic analysis. The result obtained showed that Butane configuration has the highest energy efficiency of 50.3% .while Methanol and Propane system has an energy efficiency of 46.5% and 47.7% respectively. The total energy produced by Methanol, Propane and Butane Fuel System are 273.66 KW, 234.67 and 263.92 Kw respectively. While that required are 69.45 KW, 0.062 KW and 4.972 KW respectively. This shows that the highest energy requiring and producing system is the Methanol Fuelled system. The principle of energy conservation was met in all configurations. The Exergy analysis indicated that around equipment such as Reactor, lambda burner and SOFC stack there is a change between the inlet and outlet chemical Exergy. However the chemical Exergy for Pumps, Heat exchangers, compressor and Mixer remains the same because no chemical reaction occurs in them. In addition, equipment such as pump and compressor gives higher Exergetic efficiency than others. In terms of overall loss work, Methanol, Propane, and Butane system are 422.2 KW, 247.7KW, 195.7 KW respectively. The Overall System Exergetic efficiency of the three fuel systems are 44.2%, 49.3%, and 46.7% respectively. This shows that Propane system has the highest Exergetic efficiency and least irreversibility. While Methanol fuel system has the lowest Exergetic efficiency and most irreversibility. Exergy and energy efficiency favours the choice of propane fuel system. This is because Propane is the most Exergy efficiency system.