Development of Hybrid Power Systems Based on Direct Fuel Cell/Turbine Cycle

Abstract

FuelCell Energy Inc. (FCE) is developing ultra high efficiency Direct FuelCell/Turbine® (DFC/T®) hybrid power plants. Present activities are focused both on the demonstration of the DFC/T concept in small packaged hybrid power generation units for distributed generation, and the design of multi-megawatt (Multi-MW) hybrid systems for the wholesale electric power market. The development of Multi-MW DFC/T systems has been focused on the on the design of power plants with efficiencies approaching 75% (LHV of natural gas). The design efforts included thermodynamic cycle analysis of key gas turbine parameters such as compression ratio. The power plant designs were studied for near-term deployment utilizing the existing commercially available gas turbines and long-term deployment requiring advanced gas turbine technologies. A new fuel cell cluster concept was developed for mechanical design of Multi-MW systems. The concept utilizes the existing one-MW fuel cell modules as the building block for the Multi-MW hybrid systems.