Gas Turbine Integration with an MCFC

However, in Williams (2002), FCE authors have rethought the MCFC/gas turbine hybrid problem, and have come up with an alternative system, in which the fuel cell is operated at atmospheric pressure. Pressure occurs only in the gas turbine. Applicability from 250 kW to 40 MW is claimed. The system is still a concept waiting to be realised. 

Heated fuel and water are reformed and isothermally oxidised at the MCFC anode. The unused fuel and depleted air from the anode are burnt with added air in a catalytic oxidiser, the output of which heats the cathode and supplies it with oxygen. The cathode exhaust heats the incoming fuel and water in a heat exchanger. The latter exhausts to desired users, for example steam generation or thermal process. 

In Morita etal. (2001), Japanese researchers from Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) and the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) advocate the need to change the matrix recipe from Li/K to Li/Na, for the increased fuel cell pressure range associated with gas turbines. 

6 Bar 600 °C MCFC with Air Cross Flow and Fuel Upflow 

Compressed Fuel and Steam Inlet to Anode Reform and Oxidation 

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