Ethanol and glycerin processor systems coupled to solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Optimal operation and heat exchangers network synthesis

•Simultaneous synthesis of SOFC-based systems and their associated HENs.•Ethanol and glycerin are the fuels fed to the SOFC system.•Optimization goal: to maximize the overall net efficiency of the integrated system.•The optimization problem is formulated as a MINLP model, and solved using GAMS.•The proposed resolution strategy is applicable to a variety of processes.

This paper is aimed at presenting a methodology for the simultaneous synthesis of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) based systems and their associated heat exchangers network (HEN). The optimization model is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear mathematical programming (MINLP) problem. The optimization goal is to maximize the overall net efficiency of the integrated system.Ethanol and glycerin are studied as fuels fed to the SOFC system as they constitute two renewable and sustainable sources of energy.As main results, net global efficiency values of 69.35% and 66.97% were computed for ethanol and glycerin, respectively. For both cases, the computed optimal operation pressure, the SOFC operation temperature and the fed water/fuel molar ratio values were 2 atm, 1073 K and 3, respectively.