Thermodynamic and economic analyses of a syngas-fueled high-temperature fuel cell with recycling processes in novel electricity and freshwater cogeneration plant

The current paper focuses on the performance characterization of a novel electricity and freshwater cogeneration system. The proposed system includes a solid oxide fuel cell with recycling processes using syngas as its inlet fuel. Owing to waste heat of the fuel cell unit and relying on the multi-heat recovery approach, a gas turbine cycle along with a modified Kalina cycle have been employed to generate electricity, wherein the waste heat of the Kalina cycle has been utilized as the heat source of a HDH desalination subsystem to generate freshwater. Thermodynamic and exergoeconomic analyses have been conducted through a parametric study on the suggested setup. Also, the optimal operating condition and optimum performance criteria are obtained employing multi-objective grey wolf optimization (MOGWO) algorithm. According to the results, the electricity and freshwater generation capacities of the whole setup are found as 366.7 kW and 0.179 kg/s with a total unit exergy cost of 6.48 $/GJ, respectively. Also, the use of such a system increases the energy and exergy efficiencies up to 47.49% and 36.14%, individually. According to optimization results, the optimal values of 49.455% and 4.912 $/GJ are obtained for the exergy efficiency, total unit cost of products, respectively. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.