HIGH TEMPERATURE FUEL CELLS SUPPLIED BY GLYCEROL STEAM REFORMING

The transesterification of vegetable oils appears as a commercial viable process to produce biodiesel for transportation market. This process requires methanol, steam and electricity with some additional chemicals with biodiesel as main product and a mixture of glycerol and water (80/20 wt%) as by-product. The utilization of this huge amount of glycerol appears as a not easy solvable problem and thus several authors have proposed alternative ways. Among these, one promising way concerns to integrate the main production process with a glycerol feed bottoming cycle to satisfy plant energy requirements. To this aim, a steam reforming glycerol bottoming cycle designed to syn-gas production to supply Molten Carbonate Fuel Cells seems to be one of the most promising one. Mass and energy balances of the main process within syngas utilization as feed for molten carbonate fuel cell have been determined and the reported results have demonstrated the technological feasibility of this application. Results have evidenced that plant integrated with bottoming cycle can reach a high level of energy self-production.