Thermodynamic Analysis of a Wood Chips-Based Cycle Integrated with Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Biomass is prominent among all types of renewable energy sources because of its ability in producing electricity and heat. Regarding this matter, a novel integrated structure is introduced in order to produce power and heat through biomass fuel simultaneously. This cycle has different sections including gasification process, fuel cell, Rankine cycle, ORC and a hot water and air line. The heat required for gasifier agent and air is supplied through recovery energy in this cycle. In this article, wood chips are employed to supply the required fuel of a fuel cell by gasification process. Also, the heat of the SOFC outlet stream is employed for heating up the inlet streams of Rankine cycle and ORC. Both energetic and exergetic analyses are considered in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed cycle. A sensitivity analysis is performed for observing the effects of the operational parameters on the output power and overall efficiency of the system. The results illustrate that the output power of the cycle is 152.8 MW and the overall electrical and thermal efficiencies are 51.43% and 81.13%, respectively. Also, the highest portion of exergy destruction is allocated to the fuel cell, which is about 65 MW.