Optimal configuration and energy management for combined solar chimney, solid oxide electrolysis, and fuel cell: a case study in Iran

ABSTRACT

Solar chimney is one of the ideal green energy production systems which can be used especially in desert areas. Due to the high radiation of solar intensity in the Kerman area of Iran, it can be considered as a potential region for employing this kind of energy. One drawback of using the solar chimney is its low efficiency in the night time. In this study, a new optimal configuration is designed to generate both electricity and heat simultaneously. For continuously supplying the electricity, the considered combination gives good result while at night time, the backup energy can be supplied by generating the hydrogen with a solid oxide electrolysis cells and converting it to the electricity by solid oxide fuel cells. Afterward, a fluid search optimization algorithm is employed for generating an optimal economic system. The impact of the pressure of HRSG and the length of the cells are 3.21% and 21.17%, respectively. The effect of the other parameters is ignored. Experimental results showed that the efficient value for FSO and NSGA-II are achieved in 64 and 70 iterations and the optimal value belongs to FSO with 27,527,116,953 $ which shows using the designed configuration can better supply the demand properly in the summer than the winter and in the winter, there is more need to use the backup stored energy.

KEYWORDS:

• Solar chimney
• hydrogen generation
• SOEC
• SOFC
• economic analysis
• fluid search optimization algorithm

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xi Fei

Xi Fei worked in Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, College of Art and Design and he has already studied in Nanjing Forestry University, College of Material Science and Engineering for PHD. His research interest is mainly in the area of Building energy conservation, Wood structure building engineering and Interior design. He has published several research papers in scholarly journals in the above research areas.

Ruan Xuejun

Ruan Xuejun worked in Nanjing Institute of Mechatronic Technology, Department of Humanity and Sociology. Her research interest is mainly in the area of Building energy conservation, industrial design and Interior design. She has published several research papers and patents in the above research areas.

Navid Razmjooy

Navid Razmjooy B. Sc. by the Ardabil branch of IAU University/Iran (2007), M.Sc. from the Isfahan branch of IAU University/Iran with honor in Mechatronics Engineering (2011), Ph.D. in Control Engineering (Electrical Engineering) from by the Tafresh University/Iran (2018). He is born in 1988. Research opportunity at the Amirkabir University of Technology (2017-2018). He is working in the following subjects: Control, interval analysis, Optimization, Image Processing, Machine Vision, Soft Computing, Data Mining, Evolutionary Algorithms, and System Control. He is a senior member of IEEE/USA and YRC in the IAU/Iran. He published about 90 papers and 4 books in English and Farsi in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and is now a reviewer in the national and international journals and conferences.