This blog previously has suggested that a solid oxide fuel could be used for a home and noted that a waste water plant in California had purchased three DFCs (Direct Fuel Cells) from FuelCell Energy.
The Vaasa Housing Fair 2008 will be held at a beautiful location by the sea in Suvilahti, Vaasa, three kilometers from the Vaasa city center. The housing fair area consists of private houses, small housing associations and blocks of flats, all of which have been built in an urban style, while still succeeding in remaining close to nature.
The Biopact team now informs us that the city of Vaasa, in West-Finland, will receive heat and power from a power unit equipped with a planar, SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) and fueled by renewable biogas. As part of a green housing fair, the Finnish energy solutions provider Wärtsilä will demonstrate how the ultra-low emissions unit could provide clean heat and power for 50 eco-homes in an extremely efficient manner.
The planar SOFC first takes biogas from a nearby landfill site, a.k.a. landfill gas, which has been cleaned and upgraded, then reforms the methane to produce hydrogen for the high temperature, electrochemical reaction that generates a flow of electrons.
The technology is in early demonstration phase where a low number of units are manufactured at high cost. Fontell says that it would cost around US$10 – 20,000/kW to buy the technology, which is still far from the target level. To be competitive, a fuel cell would need to cost no more than US$2,000-2,500/kW. Forecasts for 2015-2020 show the price falling to USD 1,000/kW, so the technology has potential to become competitive. But the cost development depends on both how the technology proceeds, and how fast the manufacturing volumes can be increased.
Since 2000, Wärtsilä has developed fuel cell technology for distributed power generation, and is today among the world’s front-line pioneers of this technology. The driving force is that the fuel cell technology will be one of the most promising energy technologies for decentralized power generation in the future.
As the price of natural gas rises, there is increasing development of landfill gas-to-energy facilities. This blog also previously noted similar development is underway in Rialto City. Chevron Energy Solutions is building three, 300-kilowatt Direct FuelCell units. The residual waste heat from the fuel cells will be used to warm the digesters to stimulate further methane production.
As a first step, the WFC50, i.e., the Wärtsilä SOFC system, will produce an electric output of approximately 20 kW, plus thermal output of 14 to 17 kW. The system has the capability to be scaled up to a combined capacity of 50kW.
Current experimental SOFC units are typically designed with power in the range of of 1 – 5 kW to supply combined heat and power for individual homes. The size of the WFC50 would place it in the commercial, district and industrial customer range. Wärtsilä is now focusing on the 20 – 50 kW demonstration units. After this it will develop the technology towards 200-250 kW unit size. A unit of 250 kW could then be “repeated” for applications of around 1MW.
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