SUMMARY

Hybrid systems offer high efficiency power generation, but face numerous integration and operability challenges. This dissertation addresses the implementation of a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) facility to explore the performance of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack and gas turbine when combined into a hybrid system. Specifically, the scope of this project entails developing and demonstrating a methodology for integrating a real-time numeric SOFC model with a gas turbine that has been modified with supplemental process flow and control paths to mimic a hybrid system. This facility will then provide a cost effective and capable platform for characterizing the response of hybrid systems to dynamic variations in operating conditions. HILS for researching hybrid systems requires a real-time SOFC stack computational model to interface with operating gas turbine hardware. For this to be accomplished, the means will be developed for a numerical fuel cell model to respond to operating turbine flow conditions in order to predict the level of thermal effluent from the SOFC stack. This simulated level of heating will then dynamically set the turbine's "firing" rate to reflect the thermal effluent from the modeled stack. A set of experiments, representative of conditions which would be imposed on an operating hybrid system, will be conducted to evaluate system performance. Second, a high-speed computer system with data acquisition capabilities is to be integrated with the existing controls and sensors of the turbine facility. This will allow for the utilization of a fuel cell model of sufficiently high-fidelity to infer cell performance parameters while still computing the simulation in real-time. The developed combined hardware and computational hybrid simulation facility will provide a powerful platform for investigating the performance and outlining operating domains for SOFC and gas turbines when integrated together in hybrid power generation systems.