Thermo-economics, emissions, and sustainability comparison of a novel hybrid evaporative cooled solid oxide fuel cell-recuperated gas turbine with conventional system

A novel integration of a solid-oxide fuel cell to an evaporative intercooled recuperated gas turbine (SOFC-EIcRGT) is presented. The goal of this integrated system is to reduce power consumption associated with the work of compression and hence augment power plant performance. The proposed system is compared with a conventional evaporative intercooled recuperated gas turbine (EIc-RGT). Both energetic and exergetic performance of the systems were carried out. A range of sustainability indexes were evaluated for each component of both configurations. The sustainability index helps to identify the impact on the environment. A novel entropy generation number, a dimensionless number, was proposed to identify "the ratio of component's irreversibility to the heat supplied." The maximum energy and exergy efficiencies for SOFC-EIc-RGT were nearly double that of the EIc-RGT. A novel performance map and emission map were plotted for power plant design engineers and researchers to analyse CO and NOx emissions with various operating parameters for EIc-RGT and SOFC-EIc-RGT. This economic analysis makes the system more reliable, which includes environmental and fuel cost rates.