Economics power plant fuel cells

V. Minkov, et al., "Topping Cycle Fuel Cells Effective Combined with Turbines," Power Engineering, July 1988, pp. 35-39. "Design and Economics of Large Fuel Cell Power Plants," presented at 1986 Fuel Cell Seminar, Tucson, AZ, p 255. 

As mentioned earlier, separation of C02 at concentrated sources is easier than from the environment, and carbon capture at upstream decarbonizes many subsequent economic sectors. However, it does require significant changes in the existing infrastructure of power and chemical plants. Furthermore, approximately half of all emissions arise from small, distributed sources. Many of these emitters are vehicles for which onboard capture is not practical. Thus, unless all the existing automobiles are replaced by either hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars or electric cars, the capture of C02 from the air provides another alternative for small mobile emitters. 

PAFCs were the first fuel-cell technology to be commercialised and represented almost 40% of the installed fuel cell units in 2004 (Sammes et al., 2004). Most of the demonstration units are in the range of 50-200 kW, but larger plants (1-10 MW) or smaller systems (1-10 kW) have also been built (Ghouse et al., 2000 Yang et al., 2002). Lifetimes of 5 years with > 95% durability have been demonstrated. Phosphoric acid electrode/electrolyte technology has reached maturity. However, fiirther increases in power density and reduced cost are needed to achieve economic competitiveness (US DOE, 2002 Larminie et al., 2003 Haile, 2003). 

Predictions by several fuel cell organisations for incomplete systems are not in unison, but all see economic improvements coming from mass production, notably ITM. That will be very necessary to meet the intense competition as improved vehicles with new engine schemes enter the market. The industry needs complete fuel cells to achieve competitive performance and any kind of mature economics. The difficulty of the situation is highlighted by the fuel cell bus which saves local pollution on the road, but generates at the power plant stack more pollution... 

To replace batteries, fuel cells must be demonstrated to be economically feasible, safe, and dependable. Today, rapid progress is being made to overcome the current problems. A recent estimate indicates that by late in this decade annual sales of the little power plants may reach 200 million units per year. It appears that after years of hype about the virtues of fuel cells, we are finally going to realize their potential. ... 

For fuel cell applications, the situation is often the reverse. With power as the end product, the compression of air should be minimized, especially in (small) plants in which coupling with turbine systems is not economical. The requirement for the syngas production in this case is a simple and low-cost design with a low pressure drop. 

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