The intention of this paper is to offer a general description of the Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC), its performance parameters, and the work done on the integration of MCFCs and gas turbines into an hybrid cycle to achieve high efficiencies. The paper describes results obtained for several hybrid configurations, some of them using pressurised MCFCs, others using atmospheric pressure MCFCs. Each configuration is analysed for different values of the cycle parameters, as part of the optimization process done to find an optimum solution. Finally, some conclusions are presented.
An important part of the work corresponds to the development of the code MC-GreenCell that simulates the performance of MCFC. This code, developed by the authors, estimates power, voltage, electrical current densities, heat losses, temperatures, gases flow rates and compositions, resulting from the steam reformer and from the MCFC stack. The code was utilized together with a commercial code on the assessment of the design point performance of the hybrid system. In the future the code will be used to evaluate the off-design performance of the cycle. The code has been validated using MCFC field data available from current projects.
The study focuses on hybrid cycles of 1÷25 megawatt size that may be used in commercial or industrial cogeneration, distributed power generation for hospitals, public buildings, etc.
