Abstract

Due to the fuel cell importance in nowadays industrial equipments, investigating the effective parameters to increase its efficiency is crucial. In this thesis, a 5 kW micro-CHP system based on high temperature polymer membrane fuel cell has been designed and analyzed. In this regard, a steam methane reforming system is used to produce hydrogen fuel. In this regard, Aspen software along with its Hysys module is used to simulate the fuel cell, reforming and the heat recovery systems. Also, the EES software is used for modeling high temperature polymeric membrane fuel cell have been used. In the reforming section, the simulation results indicate that the percentage of hydrogen molar fraction produced is 79.38%, which has a relative error of 1.32% compared to the experimental results. Also, considering the two values ​​of 4 and 4.8 for the SCR parameter, the reforming system was investigated. Carbon monoxide is reduced to 37.5%. The fuel cell stack power and electrical efficiency is increased to 2.55% and 1.8%, respectively, and the thermal efficiency of the system is decreased to 1.4%. By changing the AFR parameter from 4.14 to 4.58 with a constant SCR (SCR = 4), the thermal efficiency is 41.05.