Combined Cooling Heating and Power (CCHP) Generation in a Fuel Cell-Heat Pump Hybrid System

Abstract

Fuel cells enable clean and silent electric power production in smaller units with efficiencies reached only in MW-facilities by central power plants. The waste heat of the fuel cell can easily be utilized for residential heating. Membrane steam reformers purify hydrogen without cooling the reactor's effluent; only permeated hydrogen has to be cooled down prior to the electro-oxidation at the fuel cell's anode. Both the absorption and compression heat pumps may be utilized for utilizing waste heat and electricity of the fuel cell in heating and cooling applications. The following work contains scenarios for different coefficient of heating performance for both types of heat pumps. According to the net electric efficiency of the fuel cell and the coefficient of performance of the heat pumps, an overall coefficient of performance of the CCHP system is obtained. Such a CCHP system can contribute to a reduction of CO2 emissions in residential heating.