A novel ammonia solid oxide fuel cell-based powering system with on-board hydrogen production for clean locomotives

Due to the current limitations in hydrogen storage technologies in heavy-duty vehicles, on-board hydrogen production from alternative fuels comes as a viable solution. Ammonia is one type of fuel that can easily be produced and stored in these vehicles. For this reason, this paper aims at presenting a novel powering system that uses ammonia to produce power and hydrogen simultaneously to drive a passenger locomotive. The novelty of the on-board hydrogen production unit is the use of waste heat from a solid-oxide fuel cell hybrid system to disassociate the hydrogen from ammonia. A thermodynamic model based on energy and exergy analyses, which was developed and validated earlier, is used to assess the present novel system. The results of the thermodynamic assessment show that the overall energy and exergy efficiencies of this novel powering system are 61.2% and 66.3%, respectively. The ammonia disassociation and separation thermal processes have a relatively low exergy destruction rate of 1.05 kW. Also, the parametric studies are conducted in this work and the results show that producing more hydrogen enhances the overall energy and exergy efficiencies by only 0.28% and 0.24%, respectively. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper presents a novel powering system that uses ammonia to produce power and hydrogen simultaneously for a passenger locomotive. The system utilizes waste heat from a solid-oxide fuel cell hybrid system to dissociate hydrogen from ammonia. The thermodynamic assessment shows that the overall energy and exergy efficiencies of this system are 61.2% and 66.3%, with producing more hydrogen only slightly enhancing the efficiencies.