A solid oxide fuel cell system fed with hydrogen sulfide and natural gas

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) occurs naturally in crude petroleum, natural gas, volcanic gases, hot springs, and some lakes. Hydrogen sulfide can also result as a by-product from industrial activities, such as food processing, coke ovens, paper mills, tanneries, and petroleum refineries. Sometimes, it is considered to be an industrial pollutant. However, hydrogen can be decomposed from H2S and then used as fuel for a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). This paper presents an examination of a simple hydrogen sulfide and natural gas-fed solid oxide fuel cell system. The possibility of utilization of hydrogen sulfide as a feedstock in a solid oxide fuel cell is discussed. A system configuration of an SCFC combined with an external H2S decomposition device is proposed, where a certain amount of natural gas is supplied to the SOFC. The exhaust fuel gas of the SOFC is after-burned with exhaust air from the SOFC, and the heat of the combustion gas is utilized in the decomposition of H2S in a decomposition reactor (DR) to produce hydrogen to feed the SOFC. The products are electricity and industry-usable sulfur. Through a mass and energy balance, a preliminary thermodynamic analysis of this system is performed, and the system efficiency is calculated. Also in this paper, the challenges in creating the proposed configuration are discussed, and the direction of future work is presented. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.