Techno-economic analysis on Biomass gasification-SOFC system

past

Semester project

Autumn 2023

Context

Nowadays, the energy supply is still heavily based on fossil fuels, therefore it is not considered sustainable and environmentally friendly. The scientific community is currently exploring different viable alternatives to replace the use of fossil fuels. Among all the potential fuels, renewable energy is considered as one of the solutions. However, due to the dynamic and intermittent nature of renewable energies and frequent mismatch of renewable-power supply and demand, energy storage has become a critical issue to deal with the increasing deployment of renewable energies, particularly wind and solar power. Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) has attracted huge scientific attentions in the recent years, as it is a promising power supply technology that can reduce user’s dependency of electricity-grid. It is a modern conversion technology, which can generate electricity by using liquid or gaseous fuels. Small volume and external fuel storage make SOFC technology more compatible and promising, and it can easily be adjusted for different industry power plant scales. Moreover, SOFC operates at high temperature (600 ◦C), and it cogenerate high-quality heat or steam, which can be used as a heat source within the system. The conventional fuel for SOFC is hydrocarbon (CxHy), which produces carbon dioxide (CO2) as a product after oxidation of the fuel. Biomass is a renewable and carbon-neutral energy source. CO2 emissions can be minimised or even eliminated if the syngas is produced from sustainably managed biomass feedstock. This combination provides a pathway for sustainable and environmentally friendly energy production. Based on the concept of a carbon-neutral energy cycle, biomass-derived fuel supply is one of the promising ways to achieve power generation without any greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to combustion-based power generation, biomass gasification power generation systems have higher flexibility and can be equipped with different sizes of power generation facilities to match the decentralised nature of biomass resources. Therefore, the integration of biomass gasification and SOFC is expected to be an efficient and clean energy system configuration. In this project, life cycle cost (LCC) or techno-economic analysis (TEA) will be performed by using industrial data, cost/functional unit will be computed based on different scenarios.

The work will be done in collaboration with the GEM and IPESE.

The Tasks

The project consists of the following main steps:

  • Understanding SOFC-biomass gasification electricity production system.
  • Building cost data inventory for the integrated system, and performing TEA/LCC.
  • Detecting the key process via the results, and carrying out the sensitivity analysis for different scenarios.

Skills

• Understanding of energy concept

  • Lectures:
    • ME-454 Modelling and Optimisation of Energy Systems
    • Energy Conversion and/or Renewable Energy

Practical information

This project is a part of collaborative research work between IPESE (EPFL) and GEM (EPFL). The project will be conducted in Sion (EPFL Valais) at about 1h05 from Lausanne train station. The transportation fees between Lausanne and Sion will be reimbursed by the lab.

Supervisor

The project will be supervised by Xinyi (IPESE, GEM). If interested, please send your CV, with short motivation letter, to Xinyi. Xinyi Wei, mailto: xinyi.wei@epfl.ch;