Fuel cell/desalination hybrid systems

FUEL 207

Greg Albright, albrgre@iit.edu1, Said Al-Hallaj, alhallaj@iit.edu2, and Robert J. Selman, selman@iit.edu2. (1) Dept of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 33rd Str, Chicago, IL 60616, (2) Center for Electrochemical Science and Engineering, Department of Chemical and Environemental Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 33rd St., Chicago, IL 60616
The vast increase in world population and urbanization over the past two decades has resulted in severe potable water and energy shortages. Recent potable water shortages in many parts of the world have cast a spotlight on the problem and led to significant interests in new techniques for water desalination. In addition, environmental concerns over pollutant emissions from conventional power plants using fossil fuel have stimulated research and development in energy technologies that focus on efficient utilization of available energy sources combined with an aggressive search for alternative sources of energy. Currently, researchers worldwide are focusing on improving overall energy efficiency of power plants through energy conservation such as cogeneration and by using highly efficient energy conversion systems such as fuel cells.

In this talk we report a study of the technical and economic feasibility of hybrid plants integrating fuel cells with desalination processes. Capacity limitations of currently available fuel cell systems made us decide to focus on small and medium sized desalination systems (100-2000 m3/day). Both seawater and brackish water desalination were considered. Practical combination of fuel cells and desalting systems were evaluated.

A critical review of the major desalination technologies, specifically for suitability of integration into cogeneration plants and performance under varying seasonal conditions, indicates that the widely-applied multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination works best in large scale (multi-100MW) cogeneration, and is therefore an unlikely candidate for integration with fuel cells in the near future. Some desalination technologies such as multi-effect desalination (MED) and mechanical vapor compression (MVC) are flexible and are operational at a range of operating temperatures which may make them suitable for integration with both low temperature fuel cells (i.e. PAFC at 150 oC) and high temperature fuel cells such as MCFC and SOFC.

 

Fuel Cell Technology: High Temperature Fuel Cells, SOFC and MCFC
8:00 AM-12:25 PM, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Boston Park Plaza -- Cambridge Rm, Oral

Division of Fuel Chemistry

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007