Andre Hildebrandt, andre.hildebrandt@vok.lth.

se Licentiate Thesis Department of Heat and Power Engineering Lund Institute of Technology Lund University, Sweden

Limitations of Turbomachinery in Gas Turbine Hybrid Systems Comprising Membrane and SOFC Technology

Abstract
Increasing energy demand and environmental politics on national and international levels (i.e. the Kyoto Protocol), force the engineering community to look forward for high efficiency fossil fuel-based power production with the capability of CO2 capture. Among several technologies for CO2 capture (post- and pre-combustion technology applied on conventional Gas Turbine (GT) technology), two new GT-based processes promise high efficiency and low penalty costs: the Advanced Zero Emission Power plant (AZEP) and the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Hybrid System (SOFC-GT-HS). Both AZEP and SOFC-GT-HS belong to the species of so-called Hybrid Systems (HS) comprised of traditional turbomachinery technology but also additional new membrane-based technology. (Fuel Cell membrane for SOFC, and oxygen transport membrane for AZEP). Several thermodynamic studies in the past have been conducted on SOFC-GT-HS in design point and steady-state off-design. However, these studies were primarily focussed on finding maximum efficiency but did not look at the technical feasibility problems of these systems. One problem with these new power plant processes is the integration of gas turbine into the hybrid system. The integration of gas turbine has to ensure design point efficiency and power output as well as high flexibility during system part-load. These two main demands affect the optimum choice of the gas turbine or the design of its single components compressor and turbine. Limitations of turbine and compressor restrict the part-load operation of the component itself and of the entire system as well. The present thesis deals mainly with the aerodynamic limitations of the compressor to be expected in design point, off-design operation (in case of wrongly matched components) and in unsteady-state operation of SOFC-GT-HS. The aerodynamic compressor instability called surge in unsteady-state operation is mainly caused by large volume in between the compressor and the turbine. Since the AZEP concept also incorporates large gaseous volume in between the turbomachinery, similar problems of surge control will be expected for AZEP as well. The aim of this thesis is to provide modeling tools for unsteady-state analysis of compressor surge within hybrid systems. In order to investigate the effect of different compressor design on HS performance, a one-dimensional centrifugal compressor model was developed with the possibility of direct linking to the system calculation code. The centrifugal compressor was selected to be the best solution for small-scale power production with membrane technology in the near future. Validation of the compressor model is found in literature with good agreement of the model with experimental data close to the surge margin. Furthermore, a one-dimensional SOFC model with unsteady-state energy conservation based on a validated steady state SOFC model was developed and used for simulation. A MATLAB code was written for transient simulation of a pressurized SOFC-GT-HS. The MATLAB code is more dedicated for analysis of one concept rather than for concept selection. Some very brief theory is presented about surge modeling in general and applied to an SOFC-GT-HS to be used for future control issues. Unsteady-state SOFC-GT-HS simulation results show the highly sensitive interaction of the GT, the SOFC and critical operation modes regarding the compressor surge. Simplified steady-state design and off-design AZEP system calculation show the strong impact of membrane operation range on the entire system range.