Thermodynamic analysis of fuel cell combined cooling heating and power system integrated with solar reforming of natural gas

Hybrid natural gas combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) systems integrated with solar technologies offer the efficient use of distributed energy resources for reducing the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper proposes a novel CCHP system, using the phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) as the prime mover, integrated with the natural gas reforming with solar energy assistance. Their respective thermodynamic models are constructed for simulation of the system thermodynamic performance. The simulation results demonstrate that the energy efficiencies of the hybrid system with solar energy assistance are 55.12% for the heater mode and 66.77% for the chiller mode, while the exergy efficiencies are 32.87% and 31.59%, respectively. Similarly, when solar energy is not available, its energy efficiencies are 59.24% and 69.18%, while its exergy efficiencies are 40.09% and 39.01%, respectively. In the PAFC-CCHP hybrid system, the exergy efficiencies are key components in the overall efficiency, and the efficiencies with and without solar energy are 29.34% and 36.95%, respectively. Solar energy and exergy share is employed to analyze the solar energy contribution, and they are 36.1% and 35.6%, respectively. Meanwhile, the parametric analysis is also carried out to evaluate the effects of key parameters on the performance. The results show that increasing the reforming temperature, influenced by solar energy, improves the natural gas conversion and boosts the hydrogen concentration of the syngas fed into the PAFC, which increases the overall exergy efficiency. However, the effect of the reforming temperature is reduced when the reforming temperature is higher than 1073.15 K.