A comparison of high temperature fuel cells and gas turbines for expansion of the MIT Cogeneration Plant

In the past decade the MIT campus has grown by leaps and bounds. New buildings such as the Zesiger Sports Center, Stata Center, Simmons Hall, and Sidney-Pacific Street Dorm are only some of the buildings erected in the past decade. Such extreme campus growth means that the MIT campus is quickly outstripping its ability to produce steam and electricity. At the moment, MIT's campus peak demand is 31 MW of electricity and 372,282 lbs/hr of steam' yet the MIT cogeneration plant only produces 21 MW of power and 230,000 lbs/hr of firm steam production2. In addition to this desire to satisfy its own energy requirements, MIT must also minimize greenhouse emissions from the campus. In 2004 MIT completed a feasibility study to expand the campus cogeneration plant by installing two new gas turbines and Heat Recovery Steam Generators. I have endeavored to study the feasibility of using fuel cells as a replacement to these gas turbines. Specifically I examined UTC Power's PureCellTM 200, Siemens Westinghouse's SFC 200, and Fuel Cell Energy's DFC 3000. These three fuel cells represent a range of fuel cell technology available for commercial use now or within the next two years.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Jacobus, Headley Stewart

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John B. Heywood.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32945

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32945