Han Ho Song

Development of a Hybrid System of Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell and Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition Engine for Distributed Power Generation

A new hybrid system of molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) and homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine is suggested to improve the overall system efficiency and performance. In the proposed system, the catalytic burner in a standalone MCFC system is replaced with the HCCI engine. The HCCI engine is chosen over conventional spark-ignition or compression-ignition engines since it has been demonstrated to operate with highly diluted reactant mixture, which is suitable to run directly with the MCFC anode off-gas. A nonisothermal numerical model that incorporates major fuel cell losses is developed to predict the fuel cell performance. The fuel cell model assumes parallel anode and cathode flow configuration with LiNaCO3 as an electrolyte. It is integrated with an in-house HCCI engine model to investigate the hybrid system performance. At the selected design point operation around 300 kW power output, the maximum hybrid system efficiency is 21.2% (relative) higher than that of a standalone fuel cell system and, thus, achieving around 60% overall, which demonstrates the potential of the suggested hybrid system as a highly-efficient distributed power generation source in the near future.

Well-to-Wheel Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle - Hydrogen Produced by Naphtha Cracking

The Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle(FCEV) is recently evolving into a new trend in the automobile industry due to its relatively higher efficiency and zero greenhouse gas(GHG) emission in the tailpipe, as compared to that of the conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. However, it is important to analyze the whole process of the hydrogen’s life cycle(from extraction of feedstock to vehicle operation) in order to evaluate the environmental impact of introducing FCEV upon recognizing that the hydrogen fuel, which is used in the fuel cell stack, is not directly available from nature, but instead, it should be produced from naturally available resources. Among the various hydrogen production methods, ~54.1 % of marketed hydrogen in Korea is produced from naphtha cracking process in the petrochemical industry. Therefore, in this study, we performed a well-to-wheels(WTW) analysis on the hydrogen fuel cycle for the FCEV application by using the GREET program from the US Argonne National Laboratory with Korean specific data. As a result, the well-to-tank and well-to-wheel GHG emissions of the FCEV are calculated as 45,638-51,472 g CO2eq/GJ and 65.0-73.4 g CO2eq/km, respectively.