scholarly journals Hazards assessment and technical actions due to the production of pressured hydrogen within a pilot photovoltaic-electrolyser-fuel cell power system for agricultural equipment

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Pascuzzi ◽  
Ileana Blanco ◽  
Alexandros Sotirios Anifantis ◽  
Giacomo Scarascia-Mugnozza

A pilot power system formed by photovoltaic panels, alkaline electrolyser and fuel cell stacks was designed and set up to supply the heating system of an experimental greenhouse. The aim of this paper is to analyse the main safety aspects of this power system connected to the management of the pressured hydrogen, such as the explosion limits of the mixture hydrogen-oxygen, the extension of the danger zone, the protection pressure vessels and the system to make unreactive the plant. The electrolyser unit is the core of this plant and from the safety point of view has been equipped with devices able to highlight the malfunctions before they cause damages. Alarm situations are highlighted and the production process is cut off in safe conditions in the event that the operational parameters have an abnormal deviation from the design values. Also the entire power system has been designed so that any failure to its components does not compromise the workers’ safety even if the risk analysis is in progress because technical operations are being carried out for enhancing the plant functionality, making it more suitable to the designed task of supplying electrically the greenhouse heating system during cold periods. Some experimental data pertinent to the solar radiation and the corresponding hydrogen production rate are also reported. At present it does not exist a well-established safety reference protocol to design the reliability of these types of power plants and then the assumed safety measures even if related to the achieved pilot installation, can represent an original base of reference to set up guidelines for designing the safety of power plants in the future available for agricultural purposes.

Author(s):  
Corrado Delle Site ◽  
Emanuele Artenio ◽  
Gennaro Sepede ◽  
Matteo Chini ◽  
Francesco Giacobbe

Abstract Degradation of pressure equipment is becoming an important issue due to increasing asset service time in process and power plants across Europe. For this reason it is important to assess life consumption of these assets to avoid catastrophic failures. Therefore it is necessary to refer to national/international normative on this subject. At present time the Italian thermotechnical committee (CTI) has drawn up a comprehensive set of norms which help the user to set up an inspection plan to investigate and assess degradation of pressure vessels and boilers. In the first part of this paper creep damage of Steam Generators is analyzed. For this purpose results of INAIL (Istituto Nazionale per l’ Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro) database of steam boilers with 100’000 service hours or more is illustrated. Critical components are identified with reference to materials, geometry and operating parameters (pressure, temperature and time). At the end of the design life cycle, components of pressure equipment operated in creep regime must subjected to specific checks to estimate their residual life and the suitability for further use in safety conditions. The procedure allows to define reinspection intervals keeping acceptable the risk associated with the further use of the component related to creep even in evidence of defects in progress. The first check must be performed after 100,000 hours of effective use. Then, residual life evaluations must be repeated according to period of time that are defined as function of the results of all the checks carried out. In the second part of this paper boiler degradation is discussed with reference to NDT results and in-field inspection campaigns which are carried out traditionally after 45 years of service time, to minimize the risk of pressure components failures. In this paper results of different case studies are discussed with reference to degradation mechanisms and applicable standards.


Author(s):  
Ryan Falkenstein-Smith ◽  
Kang Wang ◽  
Ryan Milcarek ◽  
Jeongmin Ahn

New York State is expected to experience future population growth that is increasingly concentrated in urban areas, where there is already a heavy burden on the existing energy, water and waste management infrastructure. To meet aggressive environmental standards (such as that established by the State’s “80x50” goal), future electrical power capacity must produce substantially fewer greenhouse gas emissions than currently generated by coal- or natural gas-fired power plants. Currently, biogas is combusted to produce heat and electricity via an internal combustion engine generator set. A conventional internal combustion engine generator set is 22–45 % efficient in converting methane to electricity, thus wasting 65–78 % of the biogas energy content unless the lower temperature heat can be recovered. Fuel cells, on the other hand, are 40–60 % efficient in converting methane to electrical energy, and 80–90 % efficient for cogeneration if heat (> 400 °C) is recovered and utilized for heating and cooling in the community power system. This current research studies the feasibility of a community biomass-to-electricity power system which offers significant environmental, economic and resilience improvements over centrally-generated energy, with the additional benefit of reducing or eliminating disposal costs associated with landfills and publicly-owned treatment works (POTWs). Flame Fuel Cell (FFC) performance was investigated while modifying biogas content and fuel flow rate. A maximum power density peak at 748 mWcm-2 and an OCV of 0.856 V was achieved. It should be noted that the performance obtained with the model biofuel is comparable to the performances of direct methane fueled DC-SOFC and SC-SOFC. The common trends also concluded an acceptable range for optimal performance. Although the methane to CO2 ratios of 3:7 and 2:8 produced power, they are not the strongest ratios to have optimal performance, meaning that operation should stay between the 6:4/4:6 ratio range. Lastly, the amount of air added to the biogas mixture is crucial to achieving the optimal performance of the cell. The data obtained confirmed the feasibility of a biofuel driven fuel cell CHP device capable of achieving higher efficiency than existing technologies. The significant power output produced from the sustainable biogas composition is competitive with current hydrocarbon fuel sources. This idea can be expanded for a community waste management infrastructure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 209 ◽  
pp. 05019
Author(s):  
V.M. Nikitin ◽  
E.N. Malinovskaya

The paper discusses the trends, features, and current problems of the operation of hydro power plants in the interconnected power system (IPS) of Siberia. The main feature of the IPS of Siberia is a high proportion of hydro power plants and, as a result, a strong dependence of power generation on the natural fluctuations of water inflows into reservoirs. The problems affecting the power system efficiency arise when the inflows deviate from normal and close-to-normal values. The study indicates the need to improve the current system of managing and planning the operation of hydro power plants. The important factor that can increase the efficiency and reliability of the power system operation is bringing the permissible ranges of variations in reservoir levels in compliance with the design values. Planning the long-term power balances and increasing their validity should involve predictive scenarios of water inflows into reservoirs.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Gadalla ◽  
Nabil Al Aid

In this study, a complete economic analysis of integrating different types of fuel cells in Gas Turbine power plants is conducted. The paper investigates the performance of a hybrid system that comprises of a SOFC (Solid-Oxide-Fuel-Cell), a PEMFC (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel Cell), and SOFC-PEMFC which is/are integrated into a Gas Turbine power plant. Detailed modeling, thermodynamic, kinetic, geometric models are developed, implemented and validated for the synthesis/design and operational analysis of the combined hybrid system. The economic analysis is considered to be the basic concepts for thermo-economic optimization of the power plant under investigation, with the aim of finding the optimum set of design/operating parameters. Moreover, one of the aims of this paper is to present a detailed economic analysis of a highly coupled PEMFC-SOFC–GT hybrid plant, paying special attention to the sources of inefficiency and analyzing their variations with respect to changes in their operational parameters.


Author(s):  
Emad G. Barakat ◽  
Ali K. Abdel-Rahman ◽  
Mahmoud A. Ahmed ◽  
Ahmed Hamza H. Ali

The performance of Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has been experimentally investigated. An experimental set-up was designed to study the effects of operating parameters such as cell temperature, gas humidification, and cell operating pressure on the performance of fuel cell. The results indicated that the output power increase with the increase of humidification ratio. Furthermore, an increase of cell pressure results in a significant increase of cell power. The results indicated that increasing of the temperature leads to a decrease of cell power. The results are explained and discussed in more details for different operational parameters.


Author(s):  
Milan Brumovsky

Reactor pressure vessels are the most important components of nuclear power plants from safety and economic point of view. Thus, special interest is given to their lifetime management that requires a precious and periodical evaluation of their conditions. In Czech Republic, special program has been prepared for reactor pressure vessels in both nuclear power stations — Dukovany NPP with 4 units of WWER-440 MW and Temelin with 2 units of WWER-1000 MW reactors. This program is based on the following activities: • detailed calculations of real and potential regimes, especially of pressurized thermal shock events, • determination of vessel properties on the basis of testing surveillance specimens from standard, modified and supplementary programs, • calculations of neutron fluences on vessel wall, • measurements of neutron fluences on surveillance specimens and in vessel cavity, • evaluation of all results, evaluation of fluence and material property trends, • recommendations for future reactor pressure vessel operation (potential mitigation measures). The paper describes in detail all these activities and gives examples of their results and final evaluations. Lifetime assessment is based on a “Unified Procedure for Lifetime Assessment of Components and Piping in WWER NPPs (VERLIFE)” using “Master Curve” approach for vessel integrity evaluation [1].


Author(s):  
David Tucker ◽  
Larry Lawson ◽  
Randall Gemmen

Air flow management and control in a fuel cell gas turbine hybrid power system is evaluated using the Hybrid Performance (Hyper) hardware simulation facility at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), U.S. Department of Energy. The Hyper facility at NETL is a hardware simulation of a fuel cell gas turbine hybrid power system capable of emulating systems in the range of 300kW to 900kW. The hardware portion is comprised of a modified single-shaft gas turbine, a high performance exhaust gas recuperator, several pressure vessels that represent the volumes and flow impedances of the fuel cell and combustors, and the associated integration piping. The simulation portion consists of a real time fuel cell model that is used to control a natural gas burner which replicates the thermal output of a solid oxide fuel cell. Thermal management in the fuel cell component of the hybrid system, especially during an imposed load transient, is improved through the control of cathode air flow. This can be accomplished in a fuel cell turbine hybrid by diverting air around the fuel cell system. Two methods for air flow control are presented in the paper. In this paper, the use of bleed air by-pass and cold air by-pass are characterized quantitatively in terms of compressor inlet flow, process limits, system efficiency and system performance.


Green ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Weert Canzler ◽  
Ante Galich ◽  
Lutz Marz

AbstractRecently, the German Federal Government made the consequential decision to change its energy program. This not only as a result of the decision to shut down the existing nuclear power plants within the next few years, but also due to vital challenges like climate change and security of energy supply. The shift in the energy-technology paradigm from fossil fuel technologies to regenerative energies constitutes a major technical process but also new economic and social constellations.This paper focuses on hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in Germany. The institutional set up in this field is analysed and the new organizational actors are identified who have actively lobbied towards a political consensus. However, the experts in this field could not attain the required leadership in the public discourse on these technologies. It seems that an attractive guiding vision of a post-fossil energy future and a broad acceptance in daily use would have been major prerequisites for such leadership.


Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.


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