Modeling and control of a SOFC-GT-based autonomous power system

• Published in: Energy (Oxford) Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 406 - 417
• Main Authors: Kandepu, Rambabu, Imsland, Lars, Foss, Bjarne A., Stiller, Christoph, Thorud, Bjørn, Bolland, Olav
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-04-2007; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Control; Control relevant modeling; Energy; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Equipments for energy generation and conversion: thermal, electrical, mechanical energy, etc; Exact sciences and technology; Fuel cells; Hybrid system; Installations for energy generation and conversion: thermal and electrical energy; Other installations: mhd power plants, fuel cell plants, incineration plants, etc; SOFC; Control; Control relevant modeling; SOFC; Hybrid system; Autonomous system; Energy balance; Combined cycle power plant; Control system; Gas turbine; Dynamic model; Modeling; Solid oxide fuel cell; Fuel cell
• ISSN: 0360-5442
• DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2006.07.034

In this article, a dynamic, lumped model of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is described, as a step towards developing control relevant models for a SOFC combined with a gas turbine (GT) in an autonomous power system. The model is evaluated against a distributed dynamic tubular SOFC model. The simulation results confirm that the simple model is able to capture the important dynamics of the SOFC and hence it is concluded that the simple model can be used for control and operability studies of the hybrid system. Several such lumped models can be aggregated to approximate the distributed nature of important variables of the SOFC. Further, models of all other components of a SOFC-GT-based autonomous power system are developed and a control structure for the total system is developed. The controller provides satisfactory performance for load changes at the cost of efficiency.