Hydrogen Fuel and Electricity Generation from a New Hybrid Energy System Based on Wind and Solar Energies and Alkaline Fuel Cell

Excessive consumption of fossil fuels has led to depletion of reserves and environmental crises. Therefore, turning to clean energy sources is essential. However, these energy sources are intermittent in nature and have problems meeting long-term energy demand. The option suggested by the researchers is to use hybrid energy systems. The aim of this paper is provide the conceptual configuration of a novel energy cycle based on clean energy resources. The novel energy cycle is composed of a wind turbine, solar photovoltaic field (PV), an alkaline fuel cell (AFC), a Stirling engine and an electrolyzer. Solar PV and wind turbine convert solar light energy and wind kinetic energy into electricity, respectively. Then, the generated electricity is fed to water electrolyzer. The electrolyzer decomposes water into oxygen and hydrogen gases by receiving electrical power. So the fuel cell inlets are provided. Next, the AFC converts the chemical energy contained in hydrogen into electricity during electrochemical reactions with by-product (heat). The purpose of the introduced cycle is to generate electricity and hydrogen fuel. The relationships defined for the components of the proposed cycle are novel and is examined for the first time. Results showed that the output of the introduced cycle is 10.5 kW of electricity and its electrical efficiency is 56.9%. In addition, the electrolyzer uses 9.9 kW of electricity to produce 221.3 grams per hour of hydrogen fuel. The share of the Stirling engine in the output power of the cycle is 9.85% (1033.7 W) which is obtained from the dissipated heat of the fuel cell. In addition, wind turbine is capable of generating an average of 4.1 kW of electricity. However, 238.6 kW of cycle exergy is destroyed. Two different scenarios are presented for solar field design.