Bio-energy Carriers as Back-up Fuel in Hybrid Solar Power Plants

Hybrid Solar-Fossil Fuel Power Generation

In this thesis, a literature review of hybrid solar-fossil fuel power generation is first given with an emphasis on system integration and evaluation. Hybrid systems are defined as those which use solar energy and fuel simultaneously, thus excluding the viable alternative of solar thermal plants which use fossil fuels as backup. The review is divided into three main sections: performance metric...

Power and Fresh Water Production by Solar Energy, Fuel Cell, and Reverse Osmosis Desalination

This paper presents sizing, energy management strategy, and cost analysis for a configuration consisting of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, fuel cell (FC) storage system, and reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technology for combined power and fresh water production. In this system, PV is the main power supply source; fuel cell is a storage system accompanied by Hydrogen production and storage d...

Solar thermal power plants

Power Management in a Standalone Solar/ Fuel cell/ Battery Hybrid Power system

This paper explains the design of a standalone Solar/ Fuel cell/ Battery hybrid power system which involves the design of individual systems along with the power management circuit. The variation of solar insolation according to the time and the Maximum Power Point Tracking’s (MPPT) Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm is considered in the design of solar system. Similarly, the control of fuel f...

Vapor-fed bio-hybrid fuel cell

BACKGROUND Concentration and purification of ethanol and other biofuels from fermentations are energy-intensive processes, with amplified costs at smaller scales. To circumvent the need for these processes, and to potentially reduce transportation costs as well, we have previously investigated bio-hybrid fuel cells (FCs), in which a fermentation and FC are closely coupled. However, long-term op...