Options for residential building services design using fuel cell based micro-CHP and the potential for heat integration

Fuel cells offer many benefits for residential micro-cogeneration because of their high electrical efficiency, low emissions, and low heat-to-power ratio. However, the current design of fuel cell micro combined heat and power (CHP) systems for dwellings can be improved by better matching of the heat generated by the plant with the dwelling's load profile and heat emitters. This paper explores the design options in building services using fuel cell micro-CHP and aims to bring the two research fields together in order to design superior integrated systems. Therefore a review of current literature on the field is performed and current available options for heat recovery from fuel cells, including the grades of heat available from different fuel cell process units are discussed. This is discussed in relation to the heat demand in a dwelling and the required temperature of the most suitable heat emitters for building services design. The paper motivates a methodology that considers all possible interconnections of plant in the design of fuel cell micro-CHP in dwellings and provides an example of how multi-objective optimisation can be used to identify promising system designs. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.