Investigation on performance of an integrated solid oxide fuel cell and absorption chiller tri-generation system

An integrated tri-generation system incorporating a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and a double-effect water/Lithium Bromide absorption chiller is presented in this paper. The proposed tri-generation system can provide power, cooling or heating simultaneously with a typical gas produced from a gasification process. The system configuration and design are discussed, and the energy and mass balances are obtained through the matrix representation method and integrated into a simulation program by MATLAB soft package. The developed model comprises of three modules: SOFC module, exhaust combusting and HRSG module, and the absorption chiller module. Validation of the SOFC model is performed by comparison with a single tubular cell of Siemens-Westinghouse, and a specific case study of the system is presented. For parametric analysis, the fuel utilization ratio, fuel flow ratio and air inlet temperature are investigated and the results are discussed in detail. Copyright (C) 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.