Thermo-economic modeling of a solid oxide fuel cell/gas turbine power plant with semi-direct coupling and anode recycling

Power generation using gas turbine (GT) power plants operating on the Brayton cycle suffers from low efficiencies, resulting in poor fuel to power conversion. A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is proposed for integration into a 10 MW gas turbine power plant, operating at 30% efficiency in order to improve system efficiencies and economics. The SOFC system is semi-directly coupled to the gas turbine power plant, with careful attention paid to minimize the disruption to the GT operation. A thermo-economic model is developed for the hybrid power plant, and predicts an optimized power output of 21.6 MW at 49.2% efficiency. The model also predicts a breakeven per-unit energy cost of USD 4.70 ¢/kWh for the hybrid system based on futuristic mass generation SOFC costs. Results show that SOFCs can be semi-directly integrated into existing GT power systems to improve their thermodynamic and economic performance.