Performance optimization of an HT-PEMFC and PSA integrated system with impure hydrogen containing CO2
Jinyi Liu, Yongkang Jiang, Xiaosong Zhang, Lirong Fu, Meilong Deng
Abstract
Hydrogen produced by the natural gas steam reforming method contains impure gas, and feeding such a mixture into a proton exchange membrane fuel cell will result in poor power density and efficiency performance. To improve the devastating performance resulting from this situation, an innovative system that integrated a high-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) and a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) device is proposed in this study to explore the system performance when impure hydrogen with carbon dioxide is used. Two parameters for these two devices were investigated to ensure the validity and reliability of the novel system. The results show that the maximum power of the integrated system was 0.1204 W, this power increased by 16.1% from that obtained when using impure hydrogen in the HT-PEMFC, and the efficiency of the integrated system maintained a high value of 46%. Consequently, the feasibility of the new system was proven by the simulation results. Finally, the extended analysis of this study shows that in order to reduce the energy consumption and maintain the performance of fuel cell, the carbon dioxide purification concentration from the PSA device should be set 1% to get a maximum output power and be set 5% to get a maximum efficiency.