Component sizing and energy management for SOFC-based ship power systems

The shipping industry is facing increasing demands to reduce its environmental footprints. This has resulted in adoption of new and more environmental friendly power sources and fuels for on-board power generation. One of these novel power sources is the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) which has a great potential to act as a power source, thanks to its high efficiency and capability to handle a wide variety of fuel types. However, SOFCs suffer from low transient capabilities and therefore have never been considered to be used as the main power source for maritime applications. In this paper, novel component sizing, energy and power management approaches are proposed to enable the use of SOFCs as the main on-board power source for the first time in the literature and integrate them into the liquefied natural gas fueled Power and Propulsion System (PPS) of vessels. The proposed component sizing approach determines the power ratings of the on-board sources (SOFC, gas engine and battery) considering size and weight limits, while the energy and power management approaches guarantee an optimal power split between different power sources and PPS stability while looking after battery aging. The results indicate that the combined proposed optimization-based approaches can yield up to 53% CO2 reduction and 21% higher fuel utilization efficiency compared to conventional diesel-electric vessels.

Automated summary

The shipping industry is under increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact, leading to the consideration of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) as a novel power source. New component sizing, energy and power management approaches have been proposed to enable the use of SOFCs as the main onboard power source, resulting in significant CO2 reduction.