Use of hydrogen produced by the air conversion of motor diesel fuel in an electrochemical generator

The wide spread of diesel-electric generators in our country is due to the need to reserve responsible energy consumers and private households, in cases of loss of centralized energy supply. The large territory of the country, the development of the Far Eastern and Arctic territories also leads to the need to use diesel-electric generators and organize the supply of large volumes of diesel fuel to these remote regions.

Unlike stationary thermal power plants, such autonomous power plants have practically no combustion product cleaning systems, have low efficiency, high specific fuel consumption, high cost of energy production, have a limited motor resource and need constant maintenance.

At the same time, the current level of development of direct methods of converting the chemical energy of fuel into an electric current based on electrochemical generators makes it possible to create an autonomous power plant operating on traditional fuels, devoid of these shortcomings.

This article considers an innovative technology of combined production of electric and thermal energy using the preliminary conversion of diesel fuel into gas synthesis, followed by its supply to a high-temperature electrochemical generator. A scheme of the full technological cycle of the installation, including the air conversion of diesel fuel into synthesis gas and its further use in SOFC and waste heat boiler, has been developed. On the basis of heat balances of the burner, ECG and waste-heat boiler-utilizer, electrical efficiency of the solid oxide fuel cells’ (SOFC) battery, chemical efficiency of the burner, the temperature at the SOFC anode, the EMF of the planar cell, a portion of hydrogen oxidized at the SOFC anode, specific consumption of diesel fuel for the production of electrical and heat power were calculated. Specific consumption of diesel fuel for the production of electrical and heat power was found to be equal to 114 g/kWh (162 g r.f./kW·h) and 31.7 kg/GJ (45.1 kg r.f./GJ, 189 kg r.f./ Gcal), respectively. Specific consumption of diesel fuel corresponds to a high-efficient heat power-station and more than 3 times lower than in modern diesel generators of equal power.

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