Simulation of Biomass Gasification with Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell System

Abstract

The rapid growth increases the threat of global climate change. Biomass is a potential alternative to fossil fuel due to environmentally friendly fuel source. Therefore, power generation from biomass gasification integrated with fuel cell system is studied in this work. The objectives are to determine the amount of biomass feed needed to produce power output of 50 kW and the optimal operating conditions of both gasification process and proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The power output of the system is targeted in order to determine the amount of hydrogen required for the PEM fuel cell. The operating conditions of PEM fuel cell are varied in terms of temperature, pressure, and relative humidity (RH). The amount of hydrogen is used to determine the amount of feed required via the biomass gasification modeled by the Aspen plus programs. The parameters that are studied include gasifier temperature, air to biomass ratio, and steam to biomass ratio. The results shown that optimal operating conditions of PEM fuel cell (50 kW) are 120C, 3 atm and 100%RH and the hydrogen required is 2.320 kg/hr, whereas the optimal operating conditions of biomass gasification are 800C gasifier temperature, 2.0 air to biomass ratio, and 2.0 steam to biomass ratio with biomass feed of 27.641 kg/hr.