Performance assessment of a biomass-fuelled distributed hybrid energy system integrating molten carbonate fuel cell, externally fired gas turbine and supercritical carbon dioxide cycle

This article proposes an innovative distributed hybrid power system where the biomass gasification technology is integrated with the molten carbonate fuel cell, an externally fired gas turbine, and a supercritical carbon dioxide cycle. The thermodynamic, economic and environmental performances of the proposed system are extensively studied to show the impact of the main operational and design parameters. The proposed small capacity hybrid power system yields the highest energy efficiency of 40.88%, which is close to the efficiency level of the large-scale biomass gasification based combined cycle system. The maximum exergetic efficiency of the proposed power system is estimated to be around 34.07%. The biomass gasifier (31.79%) contributes the highest amount of exergy destruction, followed by the primary heat exchanger (15.97%), combustion chamber (14.01%) and the molten carbonate fuel cell (12.53%) unit. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the cost of electricity can reach up to 0.1057 $/kWh. A comparative performance analysis, among other biomass-fueled power generation systems suggests that the developed power system yields better techno-economic performance than the other previously proposed system configurations. The environmental analysis reveals that the proposed plant can reduce maximum up to 1510 ton of CO2/year, which yields an environmental benefit of 21,901 $/year, in comparison to a fossil fuel-based plant of similar capacity.