Study on a novel pressurized MCFC hybrid system with CO2 capture

Based on the benchmark pressurized molten carbonate fuel cell hybrid system without CO2 capture, this paper proposes a novel pressurized molten carbonate fuel cell hybrid system with CO2 capture. Firstly, the benchmark system is optimized to obtain the optimum fuel cell operating pressure, under the same pressure the performance of the new system is investigated and compared with that of the benchmark system. In addition, the sensitivity and economic performance analyses of the new system are made. Results show the benchmark system can achieve the highest efficiency of 69.34% when the molten carbonate fuel cell operates at 0.6 MPa, under the same operating pressure, the efficiency of the new system is only 0.91% lower than that of the benchmark system when capturing 90% of the emitted CO2. When the natural gas price is 6.7 $/GJ and the cost of molten carbonate fuel cell is 2700 $/kW, the cost of electricity for the proposed new system is 16.43 cents/kWh. The specific capital cost is still too high, the cost of the molten carbonate fuel cell needs to be further reduced. Achievements from this paper will provide valuable references for capturing CO2 from molten carbonate fuel cell power system with lower energy consumption.