Scientific article published!
The work shows the results of the experimental campaign performed at FBK facility on a 5 kWe stack, and proposes an effective system control strategy for the 25 kWe pilot system built within the project.
The researchers of the Hydrogen technologies and Resilient Energy Systems (HyRES) Unit of the Center for Sustainable Energy of the project partner Fondazione Bruno Kessler published the article “Integration of a solid oxide electrolysis system with solar thermal and electrical energy: A testing campaign for operation and control strategy definition“ on the IET Renewable Power Generation journal.
Congratulations to the authors Elena Crespi, Davide Ragaglia, Francesca Panaccione and Matteo Testi!
Abstract
The EU project PROMETEO has the scope of testing a 25 kW solid oxide electrolysis system integrated with a concentrated solar power plant via thermal energy storage in a relevant environment. Given the plant layout and the hydrogen demand characteristics, this work aims to identify how to operate the system effectively when renewable electricity is unavailable and how to modulate the load during hydrogen generation, thus defining the system’s operation modes and control strategy. A 5 kWe stack has been tested at the FBK facility. The hot standby tests show that feeding a reducing gas at the negative electrode and air at the positive electrode, without polarizing the stack, effectively keeps the stack hot at 750°C and prevents degradation. Conversely, the electric protection approach leads to significant stack degradation (15% voltage drop in 200 h for one cluster). Regarding modulation of hydrogen generation, with low steam flowrates, the stack current and the flow rate of produced hydrogen mainly depend on the steam flow rate, while it is not affected by the stack temperature; conversely, with high steam flowrates, the current depends only on the stack temperature (from 25 A at 670°C to 65 A at 760°C). Based on the results, two hot standby modes and two load control strategies to be implemented and tested in the PROMETEO prototype are proposed.
Acknowledgment
This work is part of the project PROMETEO. The project has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking (now Clean Hydrogen Partnership) under Grant Agreement n◦ 101007194. The Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.
Read the article here: https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1049/rpg2.13141