Project description
A fuel-flexible combined heat and power system
To reduce energy consumption and achieve near-zero emissions, there is growing need for a versatile system. This is the aim of the EU-funded SO-FREE project. It will develop a future-ready solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)-based system for combined heat and power (CHP) production that can run on any mixture of natural gas, biogas and hydrogen. It will test the creation of a standardised stack system interface, allowing full interchangeability of SOFC stack types within a given SOFC-CHP system. The project will double the required demonstration period, running two systems. The first will be used to assess compliance with all applicable certification requirements of a technology readiness level 6 prototype. The second will provide CHP with natural gas with injections of hydrogen in an operational environment.
Objective
The overall objective of SO-FREE is the development of a fully future-ready solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)-based system for combined heat and power (CHP) generation. This means a versatile system concept for efficient, near-zero-emission, fuel-flexible and truly modular power and heat supply to end users in the residential, commercial, municipal and agricultural sectors.
Beyond the primary objective required by the call topic – i.e. the delivery of a pre-certified SOFC-CHP system allowing an operation window from zero to 100% H2 in natural gas and with additions of purified biogas – the SO-FREE project will endeavour the realization of a standardized stack-system interface, allowing full interchangeability of SOFC stack types within a given SOFC-CHP system. This interface design will be taken to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as a new work item proposal (NWIP) for international standardization. In such a way all commercial barriers to full and free competition between SOFC stack suppliers and system integrators aim to be levelled.
Furthermore, this interoperability will be proved by doubling the required demonstration period: two systems will be run for 9 months each, each operating, alternately, two different stacks, which will be exchanged between the two systems. One system will be operated to assess compliance with all applicable certification requirements of a TRL 6 prototype, defining the outstanding pathway to full product certification; the other system will run at TRL7 (demonstration in operational environment) providing combined heat and power with natural gas with injections of hydrogen.
As a final proof of robustness and flexibility, the two stacks integrated in each of the two systems (one designed by AVL, the other by ICI Caldaie) will be characteristic of the extreme ends of the spectrum of SOFC operating temperatures: 650°C (Elcogen) and 850°C (Fraunhofer IKTS).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectrical engineeringpower engineeringelectric power generationcombined heat and power
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
00196 Roma
Italy