Technical Paper
Investigation of Combined Compression-Ignition Combustion and Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System for High Efficiency Power Generation from Liquid Based Hydrocarbon Fuels
2021-04-06
2021-01-0224
As global climate change concerns lead the automotive industry to push towards manufacturing more sustainable automobiles, a number of technologies and powertrains have developed. Less common among these new powertrains are fuel cell systems due to their relatively high cost and requirement of an associated fuel reformation process. This reformer is needed if widely available hydrocarbon fuels are to be used. There are currently few initiatives combining fuel cell systems with internal combustion engines, but these initiatives are unable to mitigate the primary drawbacks of fuel cell systems. Current designs place the engine downstream of the fuel cells, resulting in the same need for prior fuel processing. In this work, a configuration is considered in which the engine is placed upstream of the fuel cell system, and its syngas-rich exhaust is fed directly into the fuel cell system for electricity production.