Performance Envelope for Fuel Cell Heat Engine Hybrids and Heat Engines

摘要

The performance envelope for fuel cell heat engine hybrid cycles is developed and explored. The benefit of fuel cell heat engine hybrids was thermodynamically established. Fuel cell hybrids are combination of energy conversion sub-systems - fuel cells and heat engines. Fuel cell hybrids are important for the future for they are the most efficient devices when converting chemical energy of methane from renewable fuels to electricity. The power produced from an ideal fuel cell hybrid is a function of the current and the standard Gibbs free energy at unit activities.